Hi everyone, I've been in heated discussions about duplicates for 39 years now, and so I just don't have much patience with it any more.
I have not read many of the recent posts, but I have always gone along with the viewpoint that more runtime is good, and that it linearly bestows benefit on one. I do notice this email: Jonathan Colvin writes: >Stathis wrote: > > When you press the button in the torture room, there is a 50% > > chance that your next moment will be in the same room and and > > a 50% chance that it will be somewhere else where you won't be > > tortured. However, this constraint has been added to the > > experiment: suppose you end up the copy still in the torture > > room whenever you press the button. After all, it is certain > > that there will be a copy still in the room, however many > > times the button is pressed. Should this unfortunate person > > choose the coin toss instead? To me, it's always been a big mistake to employ the language of probability; you *will* be in the room where the torture is and you *will* be in the room where it's not, because you *can* be in two places at the same time. > > If he shares your beliefs about identity, then if he changes his mind he > > will be be comitting the gambler's fallacy. > > > > However, after having pressed the button 100 times and with nothing to show > > for it except 100 tortures, his faith that he is a random observer might be > > shaken :). You may want to read a story, "The Pit and the Duplicate" that I wrote many years ago, which dwells on the ironies of being duplicates. It's a little like Stathis's point here. http://www.leecorbin.com/PitAndDuplicate.html Lee
