Consider a future person living a happy and fulfilling life. They're unfortunate enough to suffer a severe accident, but there's time to preserve and then scan their brain fully, after which they can be brought back up in an emulator on a computer. [1] It doesn't matter that they're now running on digital hardware instead of in a biological brain; they're still a person and they still count.
Now imagine this person or "em" asks to be let alone, cuts off all communication from the rest of the world, and rejoices privately in finally being able to fully explore their introverted nature. This isn't what I imagine myself doing, but is a choice I can respect.
Someone comes along and suggests turning off this person's emulation on the grounds that no one will know the difference, and we can use the hardware for something else. This seems wrong. Which means this computational process is valuable entirely for its own sake, independent of its effect on the world.
Unlike biological brains, computational processes are very flexible. We could run many copies, or run them much faster or slower than usual. We could run a specific segment of their independent experience repeatedly, perhaps the happiest few moments. It also seems unlikely that a full emulation of a human is the only thing that's valuable. Perhaps there are simpler patterns we could emulate that would be much better in terms of value per dollar?
I'm trying to reduce my concept of value and getting lots of strange questions.
I also posted this on my blog
[1] I think this will be possible, but not for a while.
It seems to me that the unfamiliarity of the scenario is preventing you from harnessing some perfectly standard moral intuitions. Let's suppose, instead, that we have a Mark 1 human running on ordinary carbon, who announces his intention to be a hermit off in the woods and never speak to anyone again. Further, he says, he will need regular supplies of apples so as to avoid scurvy. Would you, on the grounds that this person has value in himself, go to the appointed spot every week with a bag of apples? If not, why would you supply the em with electricity? I observe in passing that some cultures have indeed supplied their holy hermits with regular offerings, but it is not clear to me that they did so while never seeing the hermit or receiving a blessing from him.
Now, if the em is not demanding charity but is running on electricity he owns, then the question seems quite different. In that case the observation "nobody will know the difference" is factually wrong: At least two people will know that they live in a culture in which contracts or property rights are not always respected when the owner is not there to defend his rights. There are all kinds of good reasons not to take any steps towards such a society, which have nothing to do with the value of any particular em.
I would see this as a potential charitable act, in competition with other charities. As such it's not particularly efficient: my time plus a bag of apples weekly to keep him free of scurvy is nowhere near as good as something like the AMF or SCI.
So perhaps the value of keeping him living is too low for the cost, and similarly we could have this for an emulated person. But the important thing is that they do have a value independent... (read more)