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Dagon comments on Consciousness and Sleep - Less Wrong Discussion

8 Post author: casebash 07 January 2016 12:04PM

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Comment author: Dagon 10 January 2016 04:47:39PM 0 points [-]

In which case, "you" have a 50% chance of dying

Actually, you have 100% chance of dying. You will also live. The teleporter creates a new branch of you, and the old branch dies. The fact that a copy exists doesn't stop the old one being you too.

Comment author: EphemeralNight 15 January 2016 05:01:40AM 0 points [-]

That is actually what I meant. But the way you're phasing it re-introduces confusion on the word "you".

What this means is, neither branch is privileged, neither branch takes precedence, there is no soul that only goes to one or the other, the subjective "you" prior to duplication does have a 50% chance of experiencing either branch. After duplication, there are two people, who are both, objectively, "you", but neither subjectively experiences being in two places at once.

One experiences the destination and subsequent existence, the other experiences a split second of dawning horror and then oblivion. Each time a "you" steps into the badly designed dupli-teleporter, that "you" has a 50% chance of either experience.