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Peter_de_Blanc comments on Preference For (Many) Future Worlds - Less Wrong
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I think this sidesteps the underlying intuitions too quickly. We have cognitive mechanisms to predict "our next experience," memories of this algorithm working well, and preferences in terms of "our next experience." If we become convinced by the data that this model of a unique thread of experience is false, we then have problems in translating preferences defined in terms of that false model. We don't start with total utilitarian-like preferences over the fates of our future copies (i.e. most aren't eager to lower their standard of living by a lot so as to be copied many times (with the copies also having low standards of living)), and one needs to explain why to translate our naive intuitions into the additive framework (rather than something more like averaging).
In what sense would I want to translate these preferences? Why wouldn't I just discard the preferences, and use the mind that came up with them to generate entirely new preferences in the light of its new, improved world-model? If I'm asking myself, as if for the first time, the question, "if there are going to be a lot of me-like things, how many me-like things with how good lives would be how valuable?", then the answer my brain gives is that it wants to use empathy and population ethics-type reasoning to answer that question, and that it feels no need to ever refer to "unique next experience" thinking. Is it making a mistake?
What makes you think a mind came up with them?
I don't understand what point you're making; could you expand?
You can't use the mind that came up with your preferences if no such mind exists. That's my point.
What would have come up with them instead?
Evolution.
In the sense that evolution came up with my mind, or in some more direct sense?