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endoself comments on Life Extension versus Replacement - Less Wrong Discussion

13 Post author: Julia_Galef 30 November 2011 01:47AM

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Comment author: endoself 30 November 2011 10:24:47PM 0 points [-]

I'm not comfortable spending my time and mental resources on these utilitarian puzzles until I am shown a method (or even a good reason to believe there is such a method) for interpersonal utility comparison.

  1. Create an upload of Jayson Virissimo (for the purpose of getting more time to think).

  2. Explain to him, in full detail, the mental states of two people.

  3. Ask him how he would choose if he could either cause the first person to exist with probability p or the second person to exist with probability q, in terms of p and q.

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 01 December 2011 07:34:27AM *  3 points [-]

  1. Create an upload of Jayson Virissimo (for the purpose of getting more time to think).

  2. Explain to him, in full detail, the mental states of two people.

  3. Ask him how he would choose if he could either cause the first person to exist with probability p or the second person to exist with probability q, in terms of p and q.

At best, this is a meta-method, rather than a method for interpersonal utility comparisons, since I still don't know which method my uploaded-self would use when choosing between the alternatives.

At worst, this would only tell us how much utility my uploaded-self gets from (probably) causing a person to exist with a particular mental state and is not actually an interpersonal utility comparison between the two persons.

Comment author: torekp 02 December 2011 02:28:36AM *  0 points [-]

In some senses of "utility", your uploaded-self's utility rankings of "create person A" and "create person B" are strongly dependent on his estimates of how much A's life has utility for A, and B's has for B. At least if you have a typical level of empathy. But then, this just reinforces your meta-method point.

However ... dig deeper on empathy, and I think it will lead you to steven0461's point.

Comment author: endoself 01 December 2011 06:17:52PM *  0 points [-]

At best, this is a meta-method, rather than a method for interpersonal utility comparisons, since I still don't know which method my uploaded-self would use when choosing between the alternatives.

This is at least useful for creating thought experiments where different ideas have different observable consequences, showing that this isn't meaningless speculation.

At worst, this would only tell us how much utility my uploaded-self gets from (probably) causing a person to exist with a particular mental state and is not actually an interpersonal utility comparison between the two persons.

We have reason to care about the definition of 'utility function' that is used to describe decisions, since those are, by definition, how we decide. Hedonic or preferential functions are only useful insofar as our decision utilities take them into account.

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