roystgnr comments on Stupid Questions (10/27/2014) - Less Wrong
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Hi everyone, I have a question related to the possibility that we live in an infinite universe, and the ethical implications that follow. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I've looked over Nick Bostrom's paper on infinite ethics which, if I understand it correctly, suggests that in an infinite universe containing infinite positive value (good) and infinite negative value (evil), it appears to be the case that nothing we do can ever really matter ethically because all we can do is a finite amount of good or evil (which has no impact on an infinite value).
But I have seen discussions of multiverse ethics on Less Wrong where commenters are seemingly talking as if they are able to act in an ethically meaningful way in an infinite cosmos, talking about something referred to as their "measure", and of increasing their measure. I'm afraid I do not understand at all what they are talking about.
Can someone please explain in layman's terms what this sort of talk is all about (sometimes the discourse at Less Wrong is over my head, so as simply and clearly as possible please!). What is "your measure" and how can it be that it matters if the amount of positive value and negative value in the universe is infinite? Sorry if I am misunderstanding something basic and this question is stupid. Thanks!
In math, "measure" is a way of assigning a "volume" (or length, area, probability) to infinite sets. The "cardinality" of the set of numbers between 0 and 1 is the same infinity as that of the set of numbers between 0 and 2, but the standard "measure" of the latter set is twice as big. You can sum up certain types of functions defined on a continuum by "integrating" those functions values using the appropriate measure.
If there turns out to be a continuum of possible universes created by, say, a particle decay, then there's also a natural physical measure that corresponds to the probabilities we observe; the set of universes in which the particle decays before 1 half-life would be "twice as big" in some sense as the set of universes created in which the decay occurs between one half-life and two half-lifes. If someone offers to do something for you if-and-only-if a particle decays before one half life elapses, you should figure out the expected utility of a 50-50 bet, even if the reality might be that your decision is affecting two different infinities of subsequent universes.
There's a lot I'm glossing over and/or don't understand myself here (why is the probability measure the only ethical measure? lots of different-but-self-consistent measures can always be mathematically well-defined) but hopefully that at least explains the vocabulary a bit.
This is an extremely clear explanation of something I hadn't even realized I didn't understand. Thank you for writing it.
The probability measure is the one that's conserved by physical time-evolution of the system, no? It would be a bit weird to have an ethical system where universe A was worth the same as universe 1 and then a few minutes later it was only worth half as much.