2009/3/11 Wei Dai <[email protected]>: > > Jack Mallah wrote: >> They might not, but I'm sure most would; maybe not exactly that U, but a >> lot closer to it. > > Can you explain why you believe that? > >> No. In U = Sum_i M_i Q_i, you sum over all the i's, not just the ones >> that are similar to you. Of course your Q_i (which is _your_ utility per >> unit measure for the observer i) might be highly peaked around those that >> are similar to you, but there's no need for a precise cutoff in >> similarity. And it's even very likely that it will have even higher peaks >> around people that are not very much like you at all (these are the people >> that you would sacrifice yourself for). >> >> By contrast, in your proposal for U, you do need a precise cutoff, for >> which there is no justification. > > Ok, I see what you're saying, and it is a good point. But most people > already have a personal identity that is sufficiently well-defined in the > current environment where mind copying is not possible, so in practice > deciding which i's to sum over isn't a serious problem (yet).
The same problem would apply to calculating probabilities. If one copy of me will see heads and a million copies of me who have a one millionth degree of similarity to me will see tails, what is my expectation of heads? I suggest introducing a factor R, a number between 0 and 1 representing the degree of similarity to the original: Pr(H) = M1R1 / (M1R1 + M2R2) = (1*1) / (1*1 + 10^6*10^-6) = 1/2 The analogous equation for utility, where Q is the absolute utility experienced by an individual copy, is then: U = (M1R1Q1 + M2R2Q2) / (M1R1 + M2R2) -- Stathis Papaioannou --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
