Benja_Fallenstein comments on How Many LHC Failures Is Too Many? - Less Wrong

16 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 20 September 2008 09:38PM

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Comment author: Benja_Fallenstein 02 October 2008 12:09:00PM 0 points [-]

Richard, I am going to assume ... that you assign an Everett branch in which you painless wink out of existence a value of zero (neither desirable or undesirable)

I'd rather say that people who find quantum suicide desirable have a utility function that does not decompose into a linear combination of individual utility functions for their individual Everett branches-- even if they had to deal with a terrorist attack on all of these branches, say. Surely everybody here would find an outcome undesirable where all of their future Everett branches wink out of existence. So if somebody prefers one Everett branch winking out and one continuing to exist to both continuing to exist, you can only describe their utility function by looking at all the branches, not by looking at the different branches individually. (Did that make sense?)