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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Pascal's Mugging: Tiny Probabilities of Vast Utilities - Less Wrong
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Is the value of my existence steadily shrinking as the universe expands and it requires more information to locate me in space?
If I make a large uniquely structured arrow pointing at myself from orbit so that a very simple Turing machine can scan the universe and locate me, does the value of my existence go up?
I am skeptical that this solution makes moral sense, however convenient it might be as a patch to this particular problem.
Yes.
Doing something like that proves you're clever enough to come up with a plan for something that's unique in all the universe, and then marshal the resources to make it happen. That's worth something.
No. He is either clever enough or not. Proving it doesn't change his value.
(I originally had a much longer comment, but it was lost in some sort of website glitch. This is the Reader's Digest version)
I think algorithmic complexity does, to a certain degree, usefully represent what we value about human life: uniqueness of experience, depth of character, whatever you want to call it. For myself, at least, I would feel fewer qualms about Matrix-generating 100 atom-identical Smiths and then destroying them, than I would generating 100 individual, diverse people who eacvh had different personalities, dreams, judgements, and feelings. It evens captures the basic reason, I think, behind scope insensitivity; namely, that we see the number on paper as just a faceless mob of many, many, identical people, so we have no emotional investment in them as a group.
On the other hand, I had a bad feeling when I read this solution, which I still have now. Namely, it solves the dilemma, but not at the point where it's problematic; we can immediately tell that there's something wrong with handing over five bucks when we read about it, and it has little to with the individual uniqueness of the people in question. After all, who should you push from the path of an oncoming train: Jaccqkew'Zaa'KK, The Uniquely Damaged Sociopath (And Part-Time Rapist), or a hard-working, middle-aged, balding office worker named Fred Jones?
Are you replying to the correct comment? If so, I don't understand what you mean, but I'm pretty sure Jaccqkew'Zaa'KK goes under the train. Which is a tragedy if he just has cruel friends who give terrible nicknames.
I'm replying to Atorm's disputation of Strange7's response to Eliezer's response to Wei Dai's idea about using algorithmic complexity as a moral principle as a solution to the Pascal's Mugging dilemma. If I got that chain wrong and I'm responding to some completely different discussion, then I apologize for confusing everyone and it would be nice if you could point me to the thread I'm looking for. :)
(And yes, Jaccqkew'Zaa'KK goes under the train, and he really is sociopathic rapist; I was using that thought experiment as an example of a situation where the algorithmic complexity rule doesn't work)
Regarding your second paragraph: which solution are you referring to. I see no mention of five bucks anywhere in this conversation.
Sorry if I was unclear, since I was jumping around a bit; five bucks is the cash demanded by the "mugger" in the original post.