ialdabaoth comments on Pascal's Mugging: Tiny Probabilities of Vast Utilities - Less Wrong

39 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 19 October 2007 11:37PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (334)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: ialdabaoth 11 October 2012 08:32:49AM 2 points [-]

Nothing could possibly be that weak.

Well, let's think about this mathematically.

In other articles, you have discussed the notion that, in an infinite universe, there exist with probability 1 identical copies of me some 10^(10^29) {span} away. You then (correctly, I think) demonstrate the absurdity of declaring that one of them in particular is 'really you' and another is a 'mere copy'.

When you say "3^^^^3 people", you are presenting me two separate concepts:

  1. Individual entities which are each "people".

  2. A set {S} of these entities, of which there are 3^^^^3 members.

Now, at this point, I have to ask myself: "what is the probability that {S} exists?"

By which I mean, what is the probability that there are 3^^^^3 unique configurations, each of which qualifies as a self-aware, experiencing entity with moral weight, without reducing to an "effective simulation" of another entity already counted in {S}?

Vs. what is the probability that the total cardinality of unique configurations that each qualify as self-aware, experiencing entities with moral weight, is < 3^^^^3?

Because if we're going to juggle Bayesian probabilities here, at some point that has to get stuck in the pipe and smoked, too.