Dmytry comments on The Absolute Self-Selection Assumption - Less Wrong

16 Post author: paulfchristiano 11 April 2011 03:25PM

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Comment author: Dmytry 18 February 2012 08:18:14AM *  1 point [-]

UDASSA implies that simulations on the 2 atom thick computer count for twice as much as simulations on the 1 atom thick computer, because they are easier to specify. Given a description of one of the 1 atom thick computers, then there are two descriptions of equal complexity that point to the simulation running on the 2 atom thick computer: one description pointing to each layer of the 2 atom thick computer. When a 2 atom thick computer splits, the total number of descriptions pointing to the experience it is simulating doesn't change.

But those 2 descriptions are going to be nearly identical to each other. Shouldn't two descriptions that differ by very little, together, be less than two descriptions that differ a lot? It seems to make very little sense to me to give same weight to 10 beings each of which is unique, and to 10 beings which differ by 4 bits, especially when those bit are not going to propagate through into rest of the being.

Surely, most of us would strongly prefer a world where you have different people, to a world where one person is running on a very thick and inefficient computer.