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muflax comments on How Many of Me Are There? - Less Wrong Discussion

7 Post author: Eneasz 15 April 2011 07:00PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 16 April 2011 04:14:23PM 6 points [-]

I have thought about similar scenarios and with the caveat that I'm speaking from introspection and intuitions and not the real thought pattern I would go through given the real choice, yes, I would be mostly indifferent about the button in the first example and would press it in the second.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 16 April 2011 04:32:06PM 5 points [-]

Fair enough. It follows that, while for all I know you may be a remarkably pleasant fellow and a great friend, I really hope you don't ever get any significant amount of power to affect the future state of the world.

Comment author: [deleted] 16 April 2011 07:55:10PM 0 points [-]

In his defense he says:

not the real thought pattern I would go through given the real choice

But since he seems aware of this, he ought to align his "introspection and intuitions" with this.

Comment author: [deleted] 16 April 2011 10:42:10PM 4 points [-]

Well, how exactly am I supposed to do this? I can't convincingly pretend to blow up the world, so there's always this caveat. Like in the case of the trolley problem, I suspect that I would simply freeze or be unable to make any reasonable decision simply due to the extreme stress and signalling problem, regardless of what my current introspection says.

Comment author: AlephNeil 18 April 2011 03:00:59PM 2 points [-]

Try as I might, I cannot help but regard this statement as either dishonest or sociopathic.

Comment author: [deleted] 18 April 2011 03:18:24PM 4 points [-]

I might be mistaken about myself, but I am certainly honest. I would agree with your judgment that it is sociopathic, as long as its understood in its psychiatric sense and not meaning "not nice" or "doesn't follow rules".

Comment author: Eneasz 16 April 2011 06:02:56PM 1 point [-]

Voted up for honesty, not agreement.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 20 April 2011 08:55:16PM 4 points [-]

Which reminds me of this:

"Would it be a kind of victory if people who now say that they care about truth, but who really don't, started admitting that they really don't?"