OK, now imagine that the computer shows you the number n on it's screen. What will you see? You say that both copies have your consciousness; will you see a superposition of numbers?
No, one copy will see 1, another 2, etc. Something like that will fork my consciousness, which has uncertain effects, which is why I proposed being asleep throughout. Until my brain has any info about what the data is, my consciousness hasn't forked yet. The fact that the info is "out there" in this world is irrelevant; the opposite data is also out there "in this world", as long as I don't know, and both actually exist (although that requirement arguably is also irrelevant to the anthropic math), then I exist in both worlds. In other words, both copies will be "continuations" of me. If one suddenly disappears, then only the other "continues" me.
Also, let's remove sleeping from the thought experiment. It is an unnecessary complication; by the way, I don't think that consciousness flow is interrupted while sleeping.
There's a reason I included it. I'm more confident that the outcome will be good with it than without. In particular, if I'm not sleeping when killed, I expect to experience death.
But the fact that you think it's not interrupted when sleeping suggests we're using different definitions. If it's because of dreaming, then specify that the person isn't dreaming. The main point is that I won't feel pain upon dying (or in fact, won't feel anything before dying), so putting me under general anesthesia and ensuring the death would be before I begin to feel anything should be enough, in that case.
And no, I'm currently unable to dissolve the hard problem of consciousness.
I meant just enough that I could understand what you mean when you claim that consciousness must only go to one path.
I think, the problem with consciousness/qualia discussions is that we don't have a good set of terms to describe such phenomena, while being unable to reduce it to other terms.
No, one copy will see 1, another 2, etc. Something like that will fork my consciousness, which has uncertain effects, which is why I proposed being asleep throughout.
I mean, one of the copies would be you (and share your qualia), while others are forks of you. That's because I think that a) your consciousness is preserved by the branching process and b) you don't experience livi...
A self-modifying AI is built to serve humanity. The builders know, of course, that this is much riskier than it seems, because its success would render their own observations extremely rare. To solve the problem, they direct the AI to create billions of simulated humanities in the hope that this will serve as a Schelling point to them, and make their own universe almost certainly simulated.
Plausible?