ike comments on Immortality: A Practical Guide - Less Wrong Discussion
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The latter. I'm willing to say that there could be some state of reality that corresponds to 1 world splitting into 2 identical worlds, but I don't think that should factor into any utility function.
What I want to see is a rigorous argument for or against cryonics over popular value systems. I'm not sure that even EA over all existing universes would say to get it.
I will note that conventional wisdom (in cryonics) seems to be that selfish people should sign up, while my theory disagrees, so there is something to be analysed there.
If my measure goes from , say, .1 to .05, and .05 universes cease to exist, that still shouldn't matter to my utility, as long as those universes that don't exist are exactly identical to the .05 that still exist with me.
When you say "universe splitting into two", it refers to 2 universes that evolve exactly the same. I can't gain something in one world in exchange for losing it in the other, or the 2 would be counted separately in my measure.
In your example of taking a pleasure and destroying worlds, every single person that would have led "fulfilling lives" with probability of X if I refuse the pleasure still leads fulfilling lives with the same probability of X. The only thing that changes is their measure, which doesn't change anything, not even probabilities, as long as all measures change together. So even an altruist towards all worlds could say that it doesn't matter how many copies of the exact worlds are, as long as the relative ratios are the same.
Ok, I misunderstood what you were referring to when you were talking about the proof. Please PM me if you ever formalize it; I'd like to read it.
Anyways, I see our utility function are radically different. I suppose there's no use arguing about them.