On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 09:05:15PM -0700, Dennis Ochei wrote: > > > Under Daniel Kolak's open > individualism<http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_individualism> there > exists one numerically distinct person who is everyone at all times. What I > want to explore is the implications of this theory for a self interested > individual. For those unfamiliar with Open Individualism, you might instead > imagine a demon appears to you, and informs you that after you die you will > experience what it is like to be every person that ever lived. > > The only rational course of action seems to be to maximize utility across > lives. Meaning if $1 will buy you in your current life 1 unit of utility, > but would afford another person 10 units, it would be rationally self > interested to donate the money, if you expect to experience what they shall > experience. This is essentially Singer's Effective Altruism at work. Are > there any other rational courses of action if Open Individualism is true > (or if the hypothetical demon appeared) and one is self interested? >
If you are going to be experiencing all possible experiences, anyway, then what does it matter what you decide? This is an indication of level confusion. Possibly decision theory might work if future experiences are discounted by how far in the future they are, but then how to work out how far away the other person's experience is from you? -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected] University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au Latest project: The Amoeba's Secret (http://www.hpcoders.com.au/AmoebasSecret.html) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
