wedrifid comments on You're in Newcomb's Box - LessWrong
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Creating something that you predict will work is a different thing to killing things that don't work. In the case of a lot of evolutionary reasoning we can more or less get away with equating the two (as well as personifying) because the evolution happened over a large time scale with a relatively stable gradient. The individual generations can kind of be blurred in together. But when considering what we want to do we can't take this kind of short cut.
Doing the things that you describe as "what Azeroth wants" would, if all else was equal, lead us to expect that it is more likely that people similar to us will exist in the future. But when looking in the other direction we don't conclude that submitting to Azeroth makes you more likely exist but rather that the people who do exist are less likely to betray Azeroth.
All of this is basically an elaboration of "No, part two is not a Newcomblike decision task".
NB: Azathoth, not Azeroth.
cough
I loved Warcraft III. Apparently it shows.
Entirely agreed with comment I replied to
Azazoth does not uncreate you for failing to maximize reproductive fitness.
Short explanation: Look around. People who don't try to maximize reproductive fitness are still getting away with existing.
Long explanation: Omega is able to pull this stunt because it was able to accurately predict how many boxes you would take before you do so, and chose accordingly. Evolution can't predict what I do until in fact I do it. And because of that, I get away with whatever I do (or at least don't get punished by evolution).
Evolution doesn't operate on the level of individuals, its a statistical process in which genes which lead to a higher proportion of copies of themselves in a population to become more widespread in said population.
So yes, my genes were influenced by this, and I have many built-in mechanisms which happen to make me more likely to have children. But evolution wouldn't even be able to notice any failure to maximize genetic fitness on my part until I died without having children.
There is a point though, in saying that the future will have less of my genes, and thus fewer people like me in it. But I'd rather have a few kids that I personally raise and teach than many kids spread out where I don't even see them.
On top of that, I don't really care about genetic similarity. I think that I'd rather have 16 great-grandchildren who were raised according to values and ideas similar to mine than 100ish who share my genes, but nothing else with me.