Completly identical, with exactly the same sensory inputs, no interaction between each other, ... ? Would be very hard to implement
I don't see what the implementation difficulty would be. You just run exactly the same simulation on identical hardware and feed it identical inputs. There are technical issues, but they have known solutions: we already do this today. If the simulation requires random numbers, they just need to be duplicated as well.
You need :
Two completely isolated simulations of the whole virtual world (not too hard, but requires twice as much computing power).
Exactly initial start states (not too hard either).
Synced random number generators between the two simulations (not too hard if you have a central PRNG, can be harder in you have distributed computing).
Eliminate all kind of hardware inducted difference timing : packet lost in a network, ECC error in a ramchip forcing a re-read, ... that will skew the simulation regarding to the clock, leading to different results as s
Suppose I have choice between the following:
A) One simulation of me is run for me 100 years, before being deleted.
B) Two identical simulations of me are run for 100 years, before being deleted.
Is the second choice preferable to the first? Should I be willing to pay more to have multiple copies of me simulated, even if those copies will have the exact same experiences?
Forgive me if this question has been answered before. I have Googled to no avail.