Lee Corbin wrote: > Stathis asks > > >>Yet another thought experiment for your consideration. You are >>offered the option of 10 years of normal life, or being cloned >>20 times with each clone living one year. I would choose the >>10 years; if I chose the 20 clones, each one of those clones >>would be kicking themselves for their stupidity. I take it you >>would choose the 20 clones, and each of your clones would be >>smug in the knowledge that they have doubled their effective >>runtime? > > > That's right. Math grabs me by the throat and says "the bridge > will hold" oops, that's another time you have to believe the > math, sorry, it says "you will live twice as long and derive > twice the benefit in 20 copies as 10, just as if a single one > were to live 20 years instead of 10, he would acquire twice the > benefit." > > (For other readers, Stathis and I of course are controlling for > irrelevant aspects of this, such as nonlinearities that might follow, > for example, from considering that twenty successive years may be > a lot more meaningful, or something, than just ten years.) > > Yes, as each clone was about to die, they'd feel bad of course, > since the death of any human being is a sort of lie, an unfulfilled > promise. But they'd feel better than the 10 year version when his > time is nearly up. He'd say "I should have gone with the 20 duplicates > and had a fuller, richer life."
I think he might say, "I've had such a short life, maybe I should have chosen the 10yrs - but then I'd have high probability of not having existed." Given that just after the cloning, the clones would quickly diverge, becoming different people; it seems you could be happy contemplating the fuller, richer life of all the people you know just as much as if they were clones of yourself. Brent Meeker --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
