(shrug) If I continue to dismiss a cargo cult even when they actually does cause gifts to appear from the heavens, simply because it pattern-matches to earlier cargo cults that didn't, my reasoning is flawed. Similarly, if I dismiss a black box that claims to be a recording of person X's identity and is capable of interacting with me the way I expect person X to, simply because it superficially pattern-matches to "police men" in GTA, my reasoning is flawed.
The star formation:heat example is a better objection. No amount of information will be the equivalent of the Sun for me, because I value things about the Sun other than its information (e.g., its heat and light). It might be the same way for people... I might value things about people other than their information (e.g., their proteins and carbohydrates), in which case no amount of information will be the equivalent of a person for me.
I don't think I actually do, though. For example, I don't think I care about the proteins and carbohydrates that much. More generally, I think I'm inclined to consider a person anything that's capable of carrying on a conversation with me of a certain level of sophistication (which is why, for example, I consider you a person rather than just a bunch of words on a screen).
And a simulation of me sufficiently detailed for me to consider it a person is relevant to my actual self for at least the same reasons that other people are relevant to my actual self.
The essence of a cargo cult is that the cult members build their various emulations of the cargo that they want, and then some kind of true cargo appears, and from the coincidence, the cultists conclude that correlation implies causation.
It is essentially impossible to ever know that a cargo cult cuases gifts to appear from the heavens. That this is impossible in an essenial way is true because a cargo cult necessarily means that the cult members do not know or understand the actual mechanisms of the production and transport of cargo, they know only tha...
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.