Eliezer: I don't think you read J Thomas carefully. He was saying, as far as I can tell from the last three sentences of his post, that the scenario itself strongly implies that you don't actually have the choice that it is asserted that you do have. As a hypothetical it fails. A person being tortured by the Gestapo is making a mistake to seriously consider the possibility that a supposed "choice" he is offered is anything but mockery and a part of his torture. *Any* person is making a mistake to seriously consider the possibility that his actions have any predictable impact on 3^^^3 other people because the chance of him being the one of those 3^^^3 people who was in the special position where he could effect the others rather than one of the others who could only be effected is simply too low.

"what would you do if your worldview had just been destroyed" is not, it seems to me, a legitimate question. The loss of your worldview implies the loss of any rational basis for inferring the consequences of your actions. It seems to me that you can ask, as a question about "you" the physical system "what would you do if you irrationally believed X", but not, as a question about rationality, "what would it be rational for you to do if you irrationally believed X"?