Yvain comments on Cryonics without freezers: resurrection possibilities in a Big World - Less Wrong

40 Post author: Yvain 04 April 2012 10:48PM

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Comment author: wedrifid 05 April 2012 03:00:46PM 8 points [-]

Quantum suicide seems like a good idea to me if we know that the assumptions behind it (both quantum and identity-related) are true, if we're purely selfish (eg don't care about the bereaved left behind), and if we don't assume our actions are sufficiently correlated with those of others to make everyone try quantum suicide and end up all alone in our own personal Everett branch.

Fortunately, if you combine the second and third potential problems you end up with a solution that eliminates both of them. Then you just have the engineering problem involved in building a bigger death box.

However, I might have the same "It's a good idea, but I am going to refuse to do this for reasons of personal sanity" reaction as I have with Pascal's Mugging.

I hope so. Your position is entirely consistent - I cannot fault it on objective grounds and what you say in your post does directly imply what you confirm in your comment. That said, the preferences you declare here are vastly different to those that I consider 'normal' and so there remains the sneaking suspicion that you are wrong about what you want. That is, that you incorrectly extrapolate your volition.

On the other hand the existence of people with the preferences you describe here is a great potential boon to the rest of us. Whenever parties have vastly different values there is the potential for trade between them. And the difference in values between those that care about measure and those that don't rounds off to absolute. When you act on your preferences we can essentially just inherit all of your stuff in exchange for a (from our perspective) token probabilistic payout. Everybody wins!

Comment author: Yvain 07 April 2012 11:00:33AM 1 point [-]

So, if Omega was willing to put a copy of you in an Everett branch that didn't already have one, how much money would you be willing to bid for this service?

If Omega was going to charge $100, and the offer remained open for as many Everett branches as you wanted, how many $100s would you give Omega?

Comment author: wedrifid 07 April 2012 03:31:12PM 1 point [-]

So, if Omega was willing to put a copy of you in an Everett branch that didn't already have one, how much money would you be willing to bid for this service?

I'm not used to evaluating the worth of Everett branches by count. But for the purpose of this question may I assume you mean "another Everett branch of equal measure to this one, as of the time I click 'comment'"?

As for an answer... um... I'm not sure, a fair bit? Working out my preferences - quantitatively - in situations so far outside the usual realm of operation is tricky.

If Omega was going to charge $100, and the offer remained open for as many Everett branches as you wanted, how many $100s would you give Omega?

After I gave him everything I had I would get a new job that more closer matched my potential for financial gain.

Two extra considerations:

  • Even aside from a terminal preference for measure maximization I would consider buying more measure purely for the purpose of giving me acausal bargaining power. (I'm even less sure about qualitatively evaluating the usefulness of acausal bargaining power.)
  • Buying more equal-measure branches is different to trying to preserve measure in the one we are in. While I think I have preferences such that I would buy a new one I'm not sure if the default behavior of humans would be to do so.