Thanks to everyone who replied to this post. So far Stathis and Bruno both answered that both cases are equivalent.
Is there anyone willing to argue against either: 1. you don't experience torture when your memory of it is wiped, or 2. you don't experience torture when your perfect duplicate is tortured? Jason On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 6:58 PM, Jason Resch <[email protected]> wrote: > Consider the following thought experiment, called "The Duplicators": > > At 1:00 PM tomorrow, you will be abducted by aliens. The aliens will tell > you not to worry, that you won't be harmed but they wish to conduct some > experiments on the subject of pain, which is unknown to them. These aliens > possess technology far in advance of our own. They have the ability to scan > and replicate objects down to the atomic level and the aliens use this > technology to create an atom-for-atom duplicate of yourself, which they > call you2. The aliens thank you for your assistance and return you > unharmed back to your home by 5:00 PM. You ask them "What about the pain > experiments?" and they hand you an informational pamphlet and quickly fly > off. You read the pamphlet which explains that a duplicate of you (you2) > was created and subjected to some rather terrible pain experiments, akin to > what humans call torture and at the end of the experiment you2was euthanized. > You consider this awful, but are nonetheless glad that they > tortured your duplicate rather than you. > > Now consider the slightly different thought experiment, called "The > Restorers": > > At 1:00 PM tomorrow, you will be abducted by aliens. Unlike the aliens > with the duplication technology (the duplicators), these aliens possess a > restorative technology. They can perfectly erase memories and all other > physical traces to perfectly restore you to a previous state. The aliens > will tell you not to worry, that you won't be harmed but they wish to > conduct some experiments on the subject of pain, which is unknown to them. > They then proceed to brutually torture you for many hours, conducting test > after test on pain. Afterwards, they erase your memory of the torture and > all traces of injury and stress from your body. When they are finished, you > are atom-for-atom identical to how you were before the torture began. The > aliens thank you for your assistance and return you unharmed back to your > home by 5:00 PM. You ask them "What about the pain experiments?" and they > hand you an informational pamphlet and quickly fly off. You read the > pamphlet which explains that a duplicate of you (you2) was created and > subjected to some rather terrible pain experiments, akin to what humans > call torture and at the end of the experiment you2 was euthenized. You > consider this awful, but are nonetheless glad that they tortured your > duplicate rather than you. > > My questions for the list: > > 1. Do you consider yourself to have experienced the torture in the case of > the Restorers, even though you no longer remember it? If not, why not. > > 2. If yes, do you consider yourself to have experienced the torture in the > case of the Duplicators? If yes, please explain, if not, please explain. > > 3. If you could choose which aliens would abduct you, is there one you > would prefer? If you have a preference, please provide some justification. > > > Thank you. > > Jason > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
