RE: More is Better (was RE: another puzzle)
Lee Corbin writes: [quoting Stathis] I think that if it is given that either you or your duplicate must die, then you should willingly sacrifice yourself if it will enrich your duplicate. Either way, I think you wake up the next morning very satisfied with the outcome. How do you wake up the next morning if you're the one who died? Unless you can effect some sort of mind merge just before dying, you lose all the experiences that you have had since you and your duplicate diverged... Well, Stathis, for heaven's sake! You've already admitted that a little memory loss does not threaten your identity! Recall the Aussies you wrote about who customarily lose an entire evening's inebriation :-) Yes, and I also admitted that there is an inconsistency in my position. Having my duplicate who has already diverged live on while I die is not just memory loss, but rather replacement of the lost memories with someone else's, which I feel is a greater threat to my identity and which I would be less likely to agree to. Memory loss would be more like having myself backed up and the backup run after I have died. If the backups are frequent, I suppose it is better than no backup at all, but I would still feel afraid of dying. At its most basic, for me anyway, the fear of imminent death is the fear that the person I am *now* will be wiped from the universe and never have any more experiences. The same consideration ought to apply to memory loss, but people don't generally think of it that way, because they know that they'll be OK afterwards, on the basis of past experience. So remember: your duplicate in the next room is *exactly* in the same state you are in right now if you lose a little recent memory, and then have some new experiences that are identical to his over the last few minutes. So he *is* you! That's what I mean when I say that we must regard duplicates as selves. And let's go back to this crazy transfer that seems (from my viewpoint) to occupy the attention of those who believe in continuers. So you expect to be the person who arrives at the other end if you are disintegrated here and teleported there. You even expect to be him if the original here is not disintegrated. (Here I must lash out at the bizarre probability calculus that ensues for many at this point: whether or not they *are* the remote version seems to depend on what happens locally here. Sheese.) There is a transfer of information in order to effect the teleportation, but this is just a technical detail; there is no actual transfer of identity, if that is what you meant. There are only people's beliefs and memories concerning who they are and who they were, coupled with the fact that human minds can only experience being one person at a time. As for how what happens here can affect whether or not the person entering the teleporter finds himself over there: if you destructively teleport an apple there, there is a 100% chance that the apple is over there; whereas if you non-destructively teleport an apple there, choosing an apple at random because you are only allowed one apple at a time, there is a 50% chance it will be the one here and a 50% chance it will be the one there. Where's the problem? So if all the 1000 Stathis's in the various rooms are to die but one, then that one continues all the others. Now we play a trick. The 1000 don't actually die but are placed in instantaneous suspended animation. Oops! The big Bean-Counter Upstairs who keeps track of where the serial numbers go is confused! He had better have all 1000 Stathis's continue in the one, just in case something goes wrong with the suspended animation machinery. But then... what to do when nothing goes wrong? How to send all the souls back into the original bodies??? (Of course, here in this paragraph I am just attempting to ridicule a point of view in which I do not believe. The truth is, of course, is that no transfers take place, and the whole idea of a continuer is wrong.) If you believe that the 1000 will continue in the one (what, I wonder, with probability 1000?), then they'll continue in the one whether or not they're disintegrated. Sorry, I don't understand what you're saying here. Do you mean that 1000 versions of me are running in parallel and all but one are stopped or suspended? It's obvious to me that however often the number running is changed, I won't be able to tell that there is any difference. This wouldn't work if they had serial numbers because if each version knew his number, they would start to diverge, and stopping one of them would then lead to the loss of unique experience, as discussed above (you might say it doesn't matter if it's something as trivial as a serial number, like losing a second of memory, but the point still stands). It wouldn't work if they had souls either, because killing some of them, even if they remained running in parallel, would send the souls to heaven or hell
Re: More is Better (was RE: another puzzle)
On Thu, Jun 30, 2005 at 04:25:09PM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote: I've sometimes wondered whether some anaesthetics might work this way: put you into a state of paralysis, and affect your short term memory. So you actually experience the doctor cutting you open, with all the concommitant pain, but you can't report it at the time and forget about it afterwards. If you knew an anaesthetic worked that way, would you agree to have it used on you for surgery? Midazolam (Dormicum) has this property, and is routinely used in anaesthesia for that purpose (patient partially wakes up during surgery, has an unpleasant experience, the drug is administered to erase short time memory (mostly)). Many other drugs (some antibiotics, also alcohol) also have this property. Speaking of alcohol: anyone who considers that consciousness is a boolean property is very welcome to a personal experiment involving measuring correlation of the degree of awareness with alcohol content in blood, titrating until loss of consciousness. When I was in high school, I read that dentists were considering use of a new anasthetic with this property. I was revolted, and even more revolted when none of my friends could see anything wrong with it. I understand such drugs are currently considered for an early therapy for traumatic incidents (if you can't remember it, you won't be traumatized by recurring memories). Experiences are real, whether you remember them or not. -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a __ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: More is Better (was RE: another puzzle)
On Thu, Jun 30, 2005 at 07:07:35PM -0700, Jonathan Colvin wrote: I'm sure they are. Awareness with no memory would be complete confusion (you'd have no idea what any of your sense qualia refer to; or of much else, E.g. severe Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome patients have no short term memory. -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a __ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE signature.asc Description: Digital signature
RE: More is Better (was RE: another puzzle)
Lee Corbin writes: [quoting Stathis] These are not trivial questions. The basic problem is that our minds have evolved in a world where there is no copying and no memory loss (memory loss may have occurred naturally, of course, but evolution's answer to it would have been to wipe out the affected individual and their genes), so there is a mismatch between reason and intuition. Well, it's time to at least be verbally able to prescribe what one would do. The flat, linear model suggests that more good runtime for me is good, less is worse, and bad runtime is worst of all. I think that if it is given that either you or your duplicate must die, then you should willingly sacrifice yourself if it will enrich your duplicate. Either way, I think you wake up the next morning very satisfied with the outcome. How do you wake up the next morning if you're the one who died? Unless you can effect some sort of mind merge just before dying, you lose all the experiences that you have had since you and your duplicate diverged, and you will never have any more new experiences or knowledge of the world. That's the problem with dying! I still don't really understand why you are so insistent that your duplicate is you and should be considered on a par with yourself when it comes to deciding what is in your self-interest. You have arrived at this conclusion from the fact that you and he were physically and mentally identical at the moment of duplication, and will remain more similar than a pair of identical twins despite diverging post-duplication. However, I don't see why it is any less valid or less rational if I say that I find the idea of having a duplicate around disturbing, and would prefer not to be duplicated, especially if there is a chance the two of us might meet. --Stathis Papaioannou _ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
RE: More is Better (was RE: another puzzle)
Lee Corbin writes: [quoting Stathis] I believe that even though someone can only *experience* being one person at a time, in the event of duplication all the copies have an equal claim to being continuations of the original, and it is in attempting to reconcile these two facts that I arrive at the notion of subjective probabilities for the next observer moment. It's with the very notion of a continuer that I've always had a problem. So let me ask you a little about it. Now clearly, if ten minutes from now the Earth Stathis is to be killed, but a Martian duplicate is made five minutes from now, you---the present Stathis---don't really have a problem with that (that is, not a problem that couldn't be fixed with a big bribe). So next, let me ask about a new situation in which one hour from now you are to die here, but a duplicate of you will the same second be established on Mars, only this duplicate has a little amnesia, and doesn't remember the last half-hour of its life. Would that be a continuer of you? Would it be a continuer of you+60_minutes from now? Will it only be a continuer of you+30_minutes from now? Is it a continuer of the you-now? How about this? For ten million dollars, would you agree to have the last ten minutes of your memory erased, where you are now? These are all interesting questions that have bothered me for a long time. I think the most useful suggestion I can make about how to decide whether other versions of a person are or aren't continuers or the same person is to avoid a direct answer at all and ask - as you have done - how much memory loss a person would tolerate before they felt they would not be the same person. This is something that comes up all the time in clinical situations. I would say that definitely I would not want total memory erasure at any price, because that would be like dying. On the other hand, 10 minutes of memory loss for ten million dollars (especially if they were US dollars, instead of our prettier and more durable, but less valuable, Australian kind) is an offer I would definitely take up; in fact, people pay to get drunk on a Friday night and suffer more memory loss than this. Before you ask, this raises another interesting question: would I agree for the same amount of money to be painlessly killed 10 minutes after being duplicated? Given that I believe my duplicate provides seamless continuity of consciousness from the point of duplication, this should be the same as losing 10 minutes of memory. However, I would probably balk at being killed if it were happening for the first time, and I might hesitate even if I knew that it had happened to me many times before. Yet another variation: for 10 million dollars, would you agree to undergo a week of excruciating pain, and then have the memory of the week wiped? What if you remember agreeing to this 100 times in the past; that is, you remember agreeing to it, then a moment later experiencing a slight discontinuity, and being given the ten million dollars (which let's say you gambled all away). You were told every time you would experience pain, but all you experienced was being given the money. Would it be tempting to agree to this again (and this time, I'll put the money in the bank)? These are not trivial questions. The basic problem is that our minds have evolved in a world where there is no copying and no memory loss (memory loss may have occurred naturally, of course, but evolution's answer to it would have been to wipe out the affected individual and their genes), so there is a mismatch between reason and intuition. --Stathis Papaioannou _ On the road to retirement? Check out MSN Life Events for advice on how to get there! http://lifeevents.msn.com/category.aspx?cid=Retirement
RE: More is Better (was RE: another puzzle)
Stathis wrote: Yet another variation: for 10 million dollars, would you agree to undergo a week of excruciating pain, and then have the memory of the week wiped? What if you remember agreeing to this 100 times in the past; that is, you remember agreeing to it, then a moment later experiencing a slight discontinuity, and being given the ten million dollars (which let's say you gambled all away). You were told every time you would experience pain, but all you experienced was being given the money. Would it be tempting to agree to this again (and this time, I'll put the money in the bank)? I've sometimes wondered whether some anaesthetics might work this way: put you into a state of paralysis, and affect your short term memory. So you actually experience the doctor cutting you open, with all the concommitant pain, but you can't report it at the time and forget about it afterwards. If you knew an anaesthetic worked that way, would you agree to have it used on you for surgery? Jonathan Colvin
Re: More is Better (was RE: another puzzle)
Jonathan Colvin wrote: I've sometimes wondered whether some anaesthetics might work this way: put you into a state of paralysis, and affect your short term memory. So you actually experience the doctor cutting you open, with all the concommitant pain, but you can't report it at the time and forget about it afterwards. If you knew an anaesthetic worked that way, would you agree to have it used on you for surgery? Here is a similar situation. I had a medical procedure performed using something called conscious sedation. In this technique, a drug was administered (Versed in my case) which allowed me to retain consciousness and even engage my doctor in conversation. Yet no long term memories were laid down. This temporary anterograde amnesia is the same experience as above, except I wasn't paralyzed and was free to report any experienced pain to my doctor. In my case, this was a (supposedly) mildly painful procedure, yet I in fact have a puzzling gap in my continuity of memory and have no recollection of any pain (or of anything else) during that time period. For all I know, I was in agony and had to be in full restraints to allow things to proceed--without anyone telling me what happened, I have no way to know. Today I'd do this again without hesitation. I wish my dentist were licensed to do this so the next time I have to have a root canal I can have no memory of it afterwards. (As an aside, Versed is quick to act but slow to recover. It's very difficult to describe the 1st person experience here but I have memories of something I can only call gradual awareness that got better over a period of a couple hours, yet the nursing staff said I was talking to them on and off during this whole period. Weird.) -Johnathan
RE: More is Better (was RE: another puzzle)
Stathis writes How about this? For ten million dollars, would you agree to have the last ten minutes of your memory erased, where you are now? These are all interesting questions that have bothered me for a long time. I think the most useful suggestion I can make about how to decide whether other versions of a person are or aren't continuers or the same person is to avoid a direct answer at all and ask - as you have done - how much memory loss a person would tolerate before they felt they would not be the same person. Yes, it's a key question. All we can assert for sure is that gradually between 0% and 100% it pays less and less to think that you're the same person. The same answer obtains if we measure in terms of how much recent memory could be lost: on this, I happen to feel that I am about fifty percent the same person at 18 that I am now. 10 minutes of memory loss for ten million dollars is an offer I would definitely take up; in fact, people pay to get drunk on a Friday night and suffer more memory loss than this. Right. Before you ask, this raises another interesting question: would I agree for the same amount of money to be painlessly killed 10 minutes after being duplicated? Given that I believe my duplicate provides seamless continuity of consciousness from the point of duplication, this should be the same as losing 10 minutes of memory. However, I would probably balk at being killed if it were happening for the first time, and I might hesitate even if I knew that it had happened to me many times before. Well, the biggest point of philosophy for me is that it be prescriptive. Suppose that you have to figure out all this ahead of time---or would you prefer just to go with a gut instinct when the time comes? Yet another variation: for 10 million dollars, would you agree to undergo a week of excruciating pain, and then have the memory of the week wiped? No. What if you remember agreeing to this 100 times in the past; that is, you remember agreeing to it, then a moment later experiencing a slight discontinuity, and being given the ten million dollars (which let's say you gambled all away). This is a horrific situation that I would put a stop to if I could. One of my old thought experiments was that you start noticing a $1000 increase in your bank account every day. Then after a month or so, you learn that you are every night being awakened and tortured for an hour, and then the memory is erased. My way of looking at it provides a clear answer: you are your duplicates, and so just because you don't remember something doesn't mean that it didn't happen (or isn't happening) to you. These are not trivial questions. The basic problem is that our minds have evolved in a world where there is no copying and no memory loss (memory loss may have occurred naturally, of course, but evolution's answer to it would have been to wipe out the affected individual and their genes), so there is a mismatch between reason and intuition. Well, it's time to at least be verbally able to prescribe what one would do. The flat, linear model suggests that more good runtime for me is good, less is worse, and bad runtime is worst of all. I think that if it is given that either you or your duplicate must die, then you should willingly sacrifice yourself if it will enrich your duplicate. Either way, I think you wake up the next morning very satisfied with the outcome. Lee
Re: More is Better (was RE: another puzzle)
This leads to a speculation that memories are an essential requirement for consciousness... On Thu, Jun 30, 2005 at 02:08:42PM -0700, Johnathan Corgan wrote: ... (As an aside, Versed is quick to act but slow to recover. It's very difficult to describe the 1st person experience here but I have memories of something I can only call gradual awareness that got better over a period of a couple hours, yet the nursing staff said I was talking to them on and off during this whole period. Weird.) -Johnathan -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 pgpffIU6NBJl2.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: More is Better (was RE: another puzzle)
Lee Corbin wrote: When I was in high school, I read that dentists were considering use of a new anasthetic with this property. I was revolted, and even more revolted when none of my friends could see anything wrong with it. Experiences are real, whether you remember them or not. It's interesting how different people react to things. I've actually been through this (see previous post); it's not theoretical for me. And I would do it again, and wish my dentist could use this technique. (Of course, in my case, is was for a semi-surgical procedure that I could probably have withstood with conscious sedation; I don't think I'd choose this for open heart surgery!) Here is a case where I voluntarily chose to undergo a mildly painful experience with the foreknowledge that I would have no recall of it. I am none the worse for it. Did I experience pain? Yes, so I am told. Was that experience real? Sure. Can I relive that experience in my memory? Not a chance. And that's how I wanted it. What is so revolting about it? What's behind the strong emotion here? (You seem to have had a similar reaction to the events depicted in Brin's Kiln People.) -Johnathan
Re: More is Better (was RE: another puzzle)
Johnathan Corgan wrote: (Of course, in my case, is was for a semi-surgical procedure that I could probably have withstood with conscious sedation; I don't think I'd ^^ without -Johnathan
Re: More is Better (was RE: another puzzle)
Russell Standish wrote: This leads to a speculation that memories are an essential requirement for consciousness... I agree. Had I known then what I know now, I would have asked the nursing staff and doctor to question me in detail about my first person experience *while it was happening*, since all I can think about now is how I felt before and after. Was I oriented to time, place, who I was, and what was happening to me? Did my first person experience of consciousness seem any different? (Aside from the obvious mellowness that any sedative induces.) While I was undergoing the procedure, and feeling the pain, did I regret the decision to be awake but not remember later? Knowing that I would forget this, is there anything about what I was experiencing that I'd want to be noted so I could read about it afterward? etc. So I do wonder, if I was awake and responding accurately to verbal cues, but not laying down memories, was I really conscious? Of course, it *seems* to me now that I was unconscious the whole time, with some odd emergent effects as the Versed wore off. But as I've gathered from reading folks like Dennett, what things seem like and what actually is happening can be very different things. Performing the question answer session described above is at least part of my willingness to undergo conscious sedation again. -Johnathan
RE: More is Better (was RE: another puzzle)
Jonathan Cilvin writes: Yet another variation: for 10 million dollars, would you agree to undergo a week of excruciating pain, and then have the memory of the week wiped? What if you remember agreeing to this 100 times in the past; that is, you remember agreeing to it, then a moment later experiencing a slight discontinuity, and being given the ten million dollars (which let's say you gambled all away). You were told every time you would experience pain, but all you experienced was being given the money. Would it be tempting to agree to this again (and this time, I'll put the money in the bank)? I've sometimes wondered whether some anaesthetics might work this way: put you into a state of paralysis, and affect your short term memory. So you actually experience the doctor cutting you open, with all the concommitant pain, but you can't report it at the time and forget about it afterwards. If you knew an anaesthetic worked that way, would you agree to have it used on you for surgery? I've thought about exactly this while sitting for hours as the assistant anaesthetist during long operations! In fact, we know that in some cases it is exactly what happens. If the anaesthetic is underdone and the patient starts moving when the surgeon starts cutting, it is possible that the patient will remember being in terrible pain after he wakes up, and sue the anaesthetist. Therefore, if an incident like this occurs, the anaesthetist gives the patient a bolus of IV midazolam, which usually ensures that the patient has no memory of the incident, and everyone is happy. I wonder what a court would say if the patient somehow found out what had happened and decided to sue anyway, arguing that although he couldn't remember it, he must have been in excruciating pain, and therefore deserves compensation for the suffering caused by the doctor's negligence? --Stathis Papaioannou _ REALESTATE: biggest buy/rent/share listings http://ninemsn.realestate.com.au
RE: More is Better (was RE: another puzzle)
Russell Standish wrote: This leads to a speculation that memories are an essential requirement for consciousness... I'm sure they are. Awareness with no memory would be complete confusion (you'd have no idea what any of your sense qualia refer to; or of much else, either). That's why consciousness is *not* a binary phenomenon. As babies grow and gain memories and knowledge, they *gradually* become conscious. This is one reason ethicist Peter Singer ascribes a lower intrinic person-ness to infants and the mentally retarded as compared to competant adults. Jonathan Colvin
Re: More is Better (was RE: another puzzle)
Yes, but you would still have to give meaning to half-conscious (or 1/10th conscious any other such real number). What about double conscious? Or is consciousness bounded by a given number (eg 1). I do not know how to give meaning to these questions. I do appreciate the analogy with the question What is the first mammal. Mammalness involves a range of phenotypic features that separates mammals from reptiles, yet undoutedly there were interim forms that exhibited some but not all features of mammals. Were these animals mammals or reptiles? Perhaps the question is meaningless, and that a different classification is needed. If that is the case, then the question of whether babies are conscious or not may not actually be meaningful. They exhibit certain characteristics at some points, whereas others kick in later. The ability to keep track of external objects even when hidden from view happens pre-lingually, for example (babies are surprised when an object disappearing behind a screen is not there when the screen is removed, for example), whereas self-awareness is apparently not present until 18 months or so. Long term memories are not laid down til much later, but even then, how long is long term. My son at age 2.75 could remember events that happened a year earlier, at age 1.75. Yet now (at age 7) he has trouble remembering things that happened at age 4. Cheers On Thu, Jun 30, 2005 at 07:07:35PM -0700, Jonathan Colvin wrote: Russell Standish wrote: This leads to a speculation that memories are an essential requirement for consciousness... I'm sure they are. Awareness with no memory would be complete confusion (you'd have no idea what any of your sense qualia refer to; or of much else, either). That's why consciousness is *not* a binary phenomenon. As babies grow and gain memories and knowledge, they *gradually* become conscious. This is one reason ethicist Peter Singer ascribes a lower intrinic person-ness to infants and the mentally retarded as compared to competant adults. Jonathan Colvin -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 pgptIUookyvsp.pgp Description: PGP signature
RE: More is Better (was RE: another puzzle)
Johnathan writes Lee Corbin wrote: When I was in high school, I read that dentists were considering use of a new anesthetic with this property. I was revolted, and even more revolted when none of my friends could see anything wrong with it. Experiences are real, whether you remember them or not. It's interesting how different people react to things. I've actually been through this (see previous post); it's not theoretical for me. And I would do it again, and wish my dentist could use this technique. I thought that you said that the pain wasn't all that terrible. Moreover---and this is key---were there or were there not better anesthetics available? (Of course, in my case, is was for a semi-surgical procedure that I could probably have withstood with conscious sedation; I don't think I'd choose this for open heart surgery!) Here is a case where I voluntarily chose to undergo a mildly painful experience with the foreknowledge that I would have no recall of it. I am none the worse for it. Did I experience pain? Yes, so I am told. Was that experience real? Sure. Can I relive that experience in my memory? Not a chance. And that's how I wanted it. What is so revolting about it? What's behind the strong emotion here? (You seem to have had a similar reaction to the events depicted in Brin's Kiln People.) The strong emotion is the mistaken idea that can come to people that there is a free lunch here: namely, that anything goes so long as it's not remembered. Where will this stop? Can we at once begin the horrific and gruesome experiments in the penal institutions? (After all, I am sure that a number of scientists are truly interested in pain, and so if we conveniently remove the moral element here---since the inmates don't remember the pain it doesn't count---they can go for broke.) So would it be worth it to you to be awakened every night at 3am and hideously tortured for an hour provided (1) you never remember it the next day (2) there is no adverse ill effect (say, lack of sleep), and (3) you are very well paid for it, say $1000 per day? If anyone wants to go for that, what then if subjectively the hour of torture is made to be a century? So that during each nightly century you realize over the decades and decades that the fool that you are during the day has made and is making a gross mistake. For you come to realize after the first few years of some particular night that your real life is a life of total pain and agony; that the mere days which interrupt the centuries (the days that your day self can remember) are relatively meaningless interludes, as nothing compared to each night's torment. Or, on the other hand, since by the next morning you don't remember it, what difference did it make Lee
RE: More is Better (was RE: another puzzle)
Stathis writes This brings up an interesting conundrum that I raised three or four torture experiments ago. Given 10 instantiations of a person having an unpleasant experience E ... for example 10 sentient programs running in parallel, is it better, if we aim to reduce suffering, to (a) terminate 9 of the 10 programs and leave one still running and experiencing E, or (b) stop 5 of the 10 programs from experiencing E, but leave them running, Ah ha! And having what sort of experience? It's crucial: I shall assume that they are having very mildly positive experiences, e.g., that their lives are barely worth living in this condition. and leave the other 5 programs continuing to experience E? I will say that it is better to terminate 9 of the 10, because we are given that the experience E is horrible: therefore the total benefit to the person is calculated as follows: 5*(-1000) + 5*(2) 1*(-1000) where, say, E is worth -1000 to you, and the so-so day worth 2. This uses the additivity of benefit. It also accords with common sense, in that if you had to sign up to go through in sequence the experiences of the 10 (five tortures and five so-so days), or instead sign up to go through just 1 torture, you'd sign up for the latter. Especially if you were forced to have a run-through of each ahead of time! If you do the total suffering equation assuming that each instantiation is separate, (a) is better. And that is the answer I arrived at. But I would argue that if you are one of the suffering victims, (a) does you no good at all: subjectively, you will continue to suffer, since the one remaining program that is running will serve as continuation for any of the 9 terminated ones. Here is the dreadful closest continuer method of Nozick and others. I claim it gives the wrong answer. Look, the continuation happens anyway, whether you die here or not! Especially if the events are outside each other's light cones, how can what happens here possibly affect what happens there? Just because you, say, are *not* terminated here does not mean that you don't continue there just as much. What happens in box P far, far away from box Q does not affect what happens in box Q. If you are in pain in box P, then it doesn't matter to you in P what goes on in Q. Your benefit seems to me to be just the sum of the two, much as if you experienced them as a single copy, but had memory erasure between the experiences. In fact, there is no way for someone inside the simulated system to know that any of the instantiations had been terminated, as long as at least one keeps running. Well, even if they are ALL terminated, the subject does not know. Knowing is an activity, and so you don't know if suddenly you all die. On the other hand, with (b) there is subjectively a 50% probability that your suffering will end. People who use probability when discussing duplicates seem to talk as though an executing process had a magical serial number generated by God. When the subject dies, it's as if the serial number is instantaneously transferred to *one* other of the possible systems that could support him, but not to the others. But there are no souls. There are no serial numbers. You become all the others equally, and with 100% probability for each. You even become them if you do not die. What will happen if you choose A is that you will experience E through one bad session. If you choose B, you will experience E through five bad sessions, and E' through five so-so sessions. Given that E' is of no particular value either positive or negative, A is the better choice. (This is just using different language to do the same calculation as above.) Lee
RE: More is Better (was RE: another puzzle)
Lee Corbin writes: This brings up an interesting conundrum that I raised three or four torture experiments ago. Given 10 instantiations of a person having an unpleasant experience E ... for example 10 sentient programs running in parallel, is it better, if we aim to reduce suffering, to (a) terminate 9 of the 10 programs and leave one still running and experiencing E, or (b) stop 5 of the 10 programs from experiencing E, but leave them running, Ah ha! And having what sort of experience? It's crucial: I shall assume that they are having very mildly positive experiences, e.g., that their lives are barely worth living in this condition. Yes, this is what I meant: that given a 49% chance of escaping E and living, or a 50% chance of escaping E by dying, dying would be the preferred option. and leave the other 5 programs continuing to experience E? I will say that it is better to terminate 9 of the 10, because we are given that the experience E is horrible But I would argue that if you are one of the suffering victims, (a) does you no good at all: subjectively, you will continue to suffer, since the one remaining program that is running will serve as continuation for any of the 9 terminated ones. Here is the dreadful closest continuer method of Nozick and others. I claim it gives the wrong answer. Look, the continuation happens anyway, whether you die here or not! Especially if the events are outside each other's light cones, how can what happens here possibly affect what happens there? Just because you, say, are *not* terminated here does not mean that you don't continue there just as much. It is the closest part of Nozick's method that I disagree with, based as it is on the assumption that that there can only be one real you - the closest continuer - out of multiple possible candidates. I believe that even though someone can only *experience* being one person at a time, in the event of duplication all the copies have an equal claim to being continuations of the original, and it is in attempting to reconcile these two facts that I arrive at the notion of subjective probabilities for the next observer moment. As for everything else you say in the above paragraph, I agree completely! I had been assuming that the experiment was being done in an isolated system, but if you take into account the rest of the multiverse, there is no reason why the continuer (or successor OM) at the point where the (a)/(b) decision is being made must come from the experiment rather than, say, 10^10^100 metres away. (Some might argue that there has to be some sort of information transfer if the successor OM is to count, but I can't see why this should be so.) The number of successor OM's and the type of experiences they are having is important, and it changes the calculations to determine the subjective probabilities. Let's assume that the external successor OM's all have a bland, average sort of experience, similar to the alternative to E in choice (b). If there is one other successor OM, then choice (b) would still be better: (a) Pr(E)=1/2, (b) Pr(E)=5/11 If there were two external successor OM's, choice (a) would now be better: (a) Pr(E)=1/3, (b) Pr(E)=5/12 If there were more than two external successor OM's, (a) would be an even better choice. Given the existence of the rest of the multiverse, where all sorts of things impossible for us here to know, let alone control, may be happening or (more importantly) may in future happen to other versions of us, a general argument can be made that it *is* helpful to increase our measure as much as possible, as a sort of counterbalance to any terrible things that may be happening to us elsewhere. It is the relative measure, which determines subjective probability of what our next moment will be like, which is important rather than absolute measure per se. In most cases it may turn out the same whether you look at it your way or my way, but in certain special cases, such as the thought experiment above considered as an isolated system, there are differences. In fact, there is no way for someone inside the simulated system to know that any of the instantiations had been terminated, as long as at least one keeps running. Well, even if they are ALL terminated, the subject does not know. Knowing is an activity, and so you don't know if suddenly you all die. On the other hand, with (b) there is subjectively a 50% probability that your suffering will end. People who use probability when discussing duplicates seem to talk as though an executing process had a magical serial number generated by God. When the subject dies, it's as if the serial number is instantaneously transferred to *one* other of the possible systems that could support him, but not to the others. But there are no souls. There are no serial numbers. You become all the others equally, and with 100% probability for each. You even become them if you
RE: More is Better (was RE: another puzzle)
Stathis writes [Lee wrote] Here is the dreadful closest continuer method of Nozick and others. I claim it gives the wrong answer. Look, the continuation happens anyway, whether you die here or not! Especially if the events are outside each other's light cones, how can what happens here possibly affect what happens there? Just because you, say, are *not* terminated here does not mean that you don't continue there just as much. It is the closest part of Nozick's method that I disagree with, based as it is on the assumption that that there can only be one real you - the closest continuer - out of multiple possible candidates. We agree on that! I believe that even though someone can only *experience* being one person at a time, in the event of duplication all the copies have an equal claim to being continuations of the original, and it is in attempting to reconcile these two facts that I arrive at the notion of subjective probabilities for the next observer moment. It's with the very notion of a continuer that I've always had a problem. So let me ask you a little about it. Now clearly, if ten minutes from now the Earth Stathis is to be killed, but a Martian duplicate is made five minutes from now, you---the present Stathis---don't really have a problem with that (that is, not a problem that couldn't be fixed with a big bribe). So next, let me ask about a new situation in which one hour from now you are to die here, but a duplicate of you will the same second be established on Mars, only this duplicate has a little amnesia, and doesn't remember the last half-hour of its life. Would that be a continuer of you? Would it be a continuer of you+60_minutes from now? Will it only be a continuer of you+30_minutes from now? Is it a continuer of the you-now? How about this? For ten million dollars, would you agree to have the last ten minutes of your memory erased, where you are now? Given the existence of the rest of the multiverse, where all sorts of things impossible for us here to know, let alone control, may be happening or (more importantly) may in future happen to other versions of us, a general argument can be made that it *is* helpful to increase our measure as much as possible, as a sort of counterbalance to any terrible things that may be happening to us elsewhere. Yes, I agree. But bringing in the multiverse may be a sort of red-herring here, if you'll permit me to focus more on just one universe for the sake of simplicity. Lee
Re: More is Better (was RE: another puzzle)
Lee Corbin wrote Again, I think that the first-person point of view can lead to errors just as incorrect as those of Ptolemaic astronomy. I disagree because, almost by definition, the first-person point of view is incorrigible. The error you point on is more subtle: it consists to communicate a first-person truth *as* it was objective. In that case we are lead to Ptolemaic-like errors. Now, if comp is assumed we can justify that the belief in a substantial-physical universe, and/or the belief that physics is the fundamental science, are just such Ptolemaic-like mistakes, made at a much deeper level of explanation though. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
RE: More is Better (was RE: another puzzle)
Lee Corbin writes (replying to Jesse Mazer): Obviously my sadness is not because the death of the copy here means that there are only 10^10^29 - 1 copies of that person... By the way, this figure 10^10^29 is a *distance*. It is, according to Tegmark, very approximately how close in terms of meters the nearest exact copy of you who is reading this is. (And it doesn't matter whether one uses meters or lightyears.) A strange fact: when you get up to numbers that big, a light year is as many times bigger than a metre as it always is, but the double exponential notation makes the difference between the two look negligible. Can anyone say how widely accepted Tegmark's infinite universe model is amongst cosmologists? Let me resort to another torture experiment. Suppose that I invite you into my house, take you down to the torture chamber, and allow you to look through a tiny peephole inside the entire steel-encased chamber. You see some Nazis torturing a little girl, and her screams are reproduced electronically so that you hear them. You are appalled. You beg me to dissolve the chamber and put an end to the atrocity. But then I say the following peculiar thing to you: Ah, but you see, this is an *exact* molecular---down to the QM details---reenactment of an incident that happened in 1945. So you see, since it's identical, it doesn't matter whether the little girl suffers once or twice. This brings up an interesting conundrum that I raised three or four torture experiments ago. Given 10 instantiations of a person having an unpleasant experience E (in the terminology of mild-mannered Hal Finney, who eschews torture even in thought experiments), for example 10 sentient programs running in parallel, is it better, if we aim to reduce suffering, to (a) terminate 9 of the 10 programs and leave one still running and experiencing E, or (b) stop 5 of the 10 programs from experiencing E, but leave them running, and leave the other 5 programs continuing to experience E? (Assume for the sake of argument that, as with dogs, painless termination is better than continuing to live with pain. Why we automatically assume this for dogs but not for humans is another question.) If you do the total suffering equation assuming that each instantiation is separate, (a) is better. But I would argue that if you are one of the suffering victims, (a) does you no good at all: subjectively, you will continue to suffer, since the one remaining program that is running will serve as continuation for any of the 9 terminated ones. In fact, there is no way for someone inside the simulated system to know that any of the instantiations had been terminated, as long as at least one keeps running. On the other hand, with (b) there is subjectively a 50% probability that your suffering will end. If you simply added up the total number of instantiations and attempted to minimise the number experiencing E, you would be doing the victim(s) a great disservice. Whether you say there is one victim or 10 to begin with is a moot point, but the conclusion still stands. --Stathis Papaioannou _ Have fun with your mobile! Ringtones, wallpapers, games and more. http://fun.mobiledownloads.com.au/191191/index.wl
RE: another puzzle
Here is yet another delightful Stathis experiment that I fished up from about ten days ago: Hal wrote Stathis Papaioannou writes: You find yourself in a locked room with no windows, and no memory of how you got there. The room is sparsely furnished: a chair, a desk, pen and paper, and in one corner a light. The light is currently red, but in the time you have been in the room you have observed that it alternates between red and green every 10 minutes. Other than the coloured light, nothing in the room seems to change. Opening one of the desk drawers, you find a piece of paper with incredibly neat handwriting. It turns out to be a letter from God, revealing that you have been placed in the room as part of a philosophical experiment. Every 10 minutes, the system alternates between two states. One state consists of you alone in your room. The other state consists of 10^100 exact copies of you, their minds perfectly synchronised with your mind, each copy isolated from all the others in a room just like yours. I'm liking this already. So while the light is, say, green, then my experiences are being multiplied---from the objective, scientific point of view, i.e., the truthful view---by an astounding factor of 10^100! Whenever the light changes colour, it means that God is either instantaneously creating (10^100 - 1) copies, or instantaneously destroying all but one randomly chosen copy. Your task is to guess which colour of the light corresponds with which state and write it down. Then God will send you home. Of course, no instance will be able to say which is which. Thus I, taken as a sort of collection of all my instances, cannot know and cannot say. Hal says: Let me make a few comments about this experiment. I would find it quite alarming to be experiencing these conditions. What?? Alarming? When the light changes and I go from the high to the low measure state, I would expect to die. When it goes from the low to the high measure state, I would expect that my next moment is in a brand new consciousness (that shares memories with the old). [Brand new consciousness? What is that? How is it different from the old one?] First, Stathis has cleverly inserted that you don't know which is which, so even the highly-anxious are spared. As for me, suppose even that I knew. Then when the light went green, my joy would be great (and in one hell of a lot of places!). When it turned red, I would be very philosophical about it and say, Aw, the best part is off now, darn it. But I'm in certainly no worse shape than when I came into this wonderful room. Although the near-certainty of death is balanced by the near-certainty of birth, it is to such an extreme degree that it seems utterly bizarre. Conscious observers should not be created and destroyed so cavalierly, not if they know about it. Why not, exactly? I'm sure that you have considered (perhaps later in the thread) the possibility that this is already happening to you millions of times per second. So what? Nothing to get excited enough to write home about. Suppose you stepped out of a duplicating booth, and a guy walked up with a gun, aimed it at you, pulled the trigger and killed you. Would you say, oh, well, I'm only losing two seconds of memories, my counterpart will go on anyway? Yes. I don't think so, I think you would be extremely alarmed and upset at the prospect of your death. Nah, not if I had been fully informed of the situation beforehand. After all, I can even throw myself out of an airplane at high altitude (with a parachute) even though it makes me extremely agitated. But since I *know* that I will be okay, it's not really a problem. God is basically putting you in this situation, but to an enormously, unimaginably vaster degree. He is literally playing God with your consciousness. I would say it's a very bad thing to do. Okay, I agree it's unethical for Him to do it to some people. But He's *not* really hurting them now, is he? At no point are they any worse off. Well, so what? What good is that? Why do I care, given that I am going to die, what happens to the one in 10^100 part of me? That's an inconceivably small fraction. In fact, I might actually prefer to have that tiny fraction stay in the room so I can be reborn. Having 10^100 copies 50% of the time gives me a lot higher measure than just being one person. I know I just finished complaining about the ethical problems of putting a conscious entity in this situation, but maybe there are reasons to think it's good. Yes! Now that's right! So I don't necessarily see that I am motivated to follow God's instructions and try to guess. I might just want to sit there. And in any case, the reward from guessing right seems pretty slim and unmotivating. Congratulations, you get to die. Whoopie. Well, would you be willing to pay much for it *to* happen, or *not to*
RE: another puzzle
Lee Corbin wrote: If I, on the other hand, knew that this wonderful room was going to be available to me on a specific date, I would collect all my favorite movies, my best books, some certain chemicals that it is best not to describe in detail, and would look forward to the most wonderful afternoon of my life. I would enthusiastically pay a good fraction of my net worth for this opportunity. Why? Why would I do it? Because logic grabs me by the throat and *forces* me to :-) What is the logic here exactly, though? From a third person point of view, why is it objectively better to have a lot of copies of you having identical good experiences than it is to have only a single copy have the same good experience? After all, if they lied to you and never made any copies at all, no version of you would ever know the difference. Also, wouldn't the same logic tell you that if we lived in a utopian society where pretty much everyone was happy, it would be immoral to use birth control because we want to make the number of people having happy experiences as high as possible? That doesn't seem like a position that anyone who rejects first-person thinking would automatically accept. Jesse
RE: another puzzle
Jesse writes Lee Corbin wrote: If I, on the other hand, knew that this wonderful room was going to be available to me on a specific date,... I would enthusiastically pay a good fraction of my net worth for this opportunity. Why? Why would I do it? Because logic grabs me by the throat and *forces* me to :-) What is the logic here exactly, though? From a third person point of view, why is it objectively better to have a lot of copies of you having identical good experiences than it is to have only a single copy have the same good experience? First, I think that it's important to remove the qualifier identical here. Would two copies cease to be identical if one atom were out of place? Hardly. On another tack, you are the same person, etc., that you were five minutes ago where strict identicalness isn't even close. Second, suppose that someone loves you, and wants the best for you. There are a number of ways to describe this, but the infinite level one universe is a good one. The person who loves you (and so has such a true 3rd person point of view) sees you die here on Earth, and is sad for you. Yet she understands totally that you are still alive in many, many places 10^10^29 from here. Her most logical retort is that you should be alive *here* too; that an extra Jesse here is simply good for Jesse, no matter what is going on far away. If she finds out that although dead on Earth, you've been copied into a body out near Pluto, (and have the same quality of life there), she's once again happy for you. After all, if they lied to you and never made any copies at all, no version of you would ever know the difference. Well, lots of things can go better or worse for me without me being informed of the difference. Someone might perpetrate a scam on me, for example, that cheated me of some money I'd otherwise get, and it is still bad for me even if I don't know about it. So this is why I subscribe to the descriptions involving measure; namely, it's better when my measure goes up, and worse when it doesn't. Also, wouldn't the same logic tell you that if we lived in a utopian society where pretty much everyone was happy, it would be immoral to use birth control because we want to make the number of people having happy experiences as high as possible? Yes, exactly. Each time we can rescue someone from non-existence, we should (given that other things are equal). That doesn't seem like a position that anyone who rejects first-person thinking would automatically accept. They may not. But the two great moral revolutions/revelations of my life--- (i) cryonics (ii) the Hedonistic Imperative (www.hedweb.com) --- lay down that life is better than death, and pleasure is better than pain. And that we need not be shy about uniformizing and extending these concepts as far as we can. Lee
RE: another puzzle
Lee Corbin wrote: Jesse writes Lee Corbin wrote: If I, on the other hand, knew that this wonderful room was going to be available to me on a specific date,... I would enthusiastically pay a good fraction of my net worth for this opportunity. Why? Why would I do it? Because logic grabs me by the throat and *forces* me to :-) What is the logic here exactly, though? From a third person point of view, why is it objectively better to have a lot of copies of you having identical good experiences than it is to have only a single copy have the same good experience? First, I think that it's important to remove the qualifier identical here. Would two copies cease to be identical if one atom were out of place? I meant something more like running the same program--I was thinking in terms of minds running on computers, since that's the only way to insure all the copies run in lockstep. If you're talking about ordinary physical copies, the butterfly effect probably insures their behavior and experiences will diverge in a noticeable macroscopic way fairly quickly. Hardly. On another tack, you are the same person, etc., that you were five minutes ago where strict identicalness isn't even close. From a third-person POV, why am I the same person? If you don't believe there's an objective truth about continuity of identity, isn't it just a sort of aesthetic call? Second, suppose that someone loves you, and wants the best for you. There are a number of ways to describe this, but the infinite level one universe is a good one. The person who loves you (and so has such a true 3rd person point of view) sees you die here on Earth, and is sad for you. Yet she understands totally that you are still alive in many, many places 10^10^29 from here. Her most logical retort is that you should be alive *here* too; that an extra Jesse here is simply good for Jesse, no matter what is going on far away. If she finds out that although dead on Earth, you've been copied into a body out near Pluto, (and have the same quality of life there), she's once again happy for you. That's a pretty unhuman kind of love though--if a person I know dies, I'm sad because I'll never get to interact with them again, the fact that versions of them may continue to exist in totally unreachable parallel universes isn't much comfort. Obviously my sadness is not because the death of the copy here means that there are only 10^10^29 - 1 copies of that person rather than 10^10^29 copies. By the same token, the relief I'd feel knowing that there's a backup copy who's living on Pluto has to do with the fact that the potential for meeting and interacting now exists again, that all the information in my friend's brain hasn't been lost to me forever. But if I find out that there are *two* backup copies running in lockstep on Pluto, that doesn't make me any happier than I was before, in fact I wouldn't feel a twinge of sadness if one of the copies was deleted to save room on the Plutonian hard drive. After all, if they lied to you and never made any copies at all, no version of you would ever know the difference. Well, lots of things can go better or worse for me without me being informed of the difference. Someone might perpetrate a scam on me, for example, that cheated me of some money I'd otherwise get, and it is still bad for me even if I don't know about it. OK, in that case there are distinct potential experiences you might have had that you now won't get to have. But in the case of a large number of copies running in lockstep, there are no distinct experiences the copies will have that a single copy wouldn't have. Also, wouldn't the same logic tell you that if we lived in a utopian society where pretty much everyone was happy, it would be immoral to use birth control because we want to make the number of people having happy experiences as high as possible? Yes, exactly. Each time we can rescue someone from non-existence, we should (given that other things are equal). But if there's already at least one instantiation of a particular program, should we count additional instantiations as distinct someones? Aren't they just multiple copies of the same someone, so as long as there's at least one copy, that someone exists? That doesn't seem like a position that anyone who rejects first-person thinking would automatically accept. They may not. But the two great moral revolutions/revelations of my life--- (i) cryonics (ii) the Hedonistic Imperative (www.hedweb.com) --- lay down that life is better than death, and pleasure is better than pain. But neither of these necessarily justify the idea that redundant copies of the same programs are better than single copies of it. The real problem here is that when we talk about what's better from a first-person POV, we just mean what *I* would prefer to experience happening to me; but if you want to only think in terms of a
More is Better (was RE: another puzzle)
Jesse writes First, I think that it's important to remove the qualifier identical here. Would two copies cease to be identical if one atom were out of place? I meant something more like running the same program Okay, that's fine. On another tack, you are the same person, etc., that you were five minutes ago where strict identicalness isn't even close. From a third-person POV, why am I the same person? If you don't believe there's an objective truth about continuity of identity, isn't it just a sort of aesthetic call? When we say that you are the same person you were a few minutes ago, of course, we are starting from common usage and going from there. Normal people value their lives, and don't want to die, say, next week. Even legally, people are regarded as having an identity that doesn't change much over time. Objectively, (i.e. 3rd person), there really *is* a fuzzy set of states that ought to be regarded as Jesse Mazur. Any intelligent investigator (or even a program that we cannot quite write yet) could examine each of the six billion people in the world and give a Yes or No answer to whether this is an instance of Jesse Mazur. Naturally in the case of duplicates (running on computers or running on biological hardware doesn't matter) it may be found that there is more than one Jesse running. It's *not* aesthetic whether, say, George Bush is you or not. He's definitely not! He doesn't have your memories, for the first thing. It's simply objectively true that some programs---or some clumps of biological matter---are Jesse Mazur and others are not. (Even though the boundary will not be exact, but fuzzy.) Second, suppose that someone loves you, and wants the best for you. The person who loves you... If she finds out that although dead on Earth, you've been copied into a body out near Pluto, (and have the same quality of life there), she's once again happy for you. That's a pretty unhuman kind of love though--if a person I know dies, I'm sad because I'll never get to interact with them again, Then you don't know true love :-) (just kidding) because as the great novelists have explained, truly loving someone involves wanting what is best for *them*, not just that you'll get the pleasure of their company. Hence the examples where one lover dies to save the other. Obviously my sadness is not because the death of the copy here means that there are only 10^10^29 - 1 copies of that person... By the way, this figure 10^10^29 is a *distance*. It is, according to Tegmark, very approximately how close in terms of meters the nearest exact copy of you who is reading this is. (And it doesn't matter whether one uses meters or lightyears.) Well, lots of things can go better or worse for me without me being informed of the difference. Someone might perpetrate a scam on me, for example, that cheated me of some money I'd otherwise get, and it is still bad for me even if I don't know about it. OK, in that case there are distinct potential experiences you might have had that you now won't get to have. But in the case of a large number of copies running in lockstep, there are no distinct experiences the copies will have that a single copy wouldn't have. I am speaking even of the case you bring up where the experiences are *exactly* alike, although, as I say, for physical copies a few atoms (or even many) doesn't matter much. This, then, is the big question: how may I appeal to your intuition in such a way that you come to agree that benefit is strictly additive? Let me resort to another torture experiment. Suppose that I invite you into my house, take you down to the torture chamber, and allow you to look through a tiny peephole inside the entire steel-encased chamber. You see some Nazis torturing a little girl, and her screams are reproduced electronically so that you hear them. You are appalled. You beg me to dissolve the chamber and put an end to the atrocity. But then I say the following peculiar thing to you: Ah, but you see, this is an *exact* molecular---down to the QM details---reenactment of an incident that happened in 1945. So you see, since it's identical, it doesn't matter whether the little girl suffers once or twice. Now contrive translated versions of that to programs, where a program here is suffering exactly the same way that it's suffering on Mars. Still feel that since one is taking place anyway, it doesn't matter whether a second one is? The love of a mother who understood all the facts would not mislead her into making the correct decision: all other things being equal, (say that her daughter was to live happily in any case after 2007), she would judge that it is better for her daughter to suffer only one computation---here, say---than two, (say here and on Mars). Each time that the girl's suffering is independently and causally calculated is a terrible thing. It is this last sentence that well sums up the entire objective
RE: More is Better (was RE: another puzzle)
Lee Corbin wrote: Jesse writes First, I think that it's important to remove the qualifier identical here. Would two copies cease to be identical if one atom were out of place? I meant something more like running the same program Okay, that's fine. On another tack, you are the same person, etc., that you were five minutes ago where strict identicalness isn't even close. From a third-person POV, why am I the same person? If you don't believe there's an objective truth about continuity of identity, isn't it just a sort of aesthetic call? When we say that you are the same person you were a few minutes ago, of course, we are starting from common usage and going from there. Normal people value their lives, and don't want to die, say, next week. Even legally, people are regarded as having an identity that doesn't change much over time. Objectively, (i.e. 3rd person), there really *is* a fuzzy set of states that ought to be regarded as Jesse Mazur. MazEr! Any intelligent investigator (or even a program that we cannot quite write yet) could examine each of the six billion people in the world and give a Yes or No answer to whether this is an instance of Jesse Mazur. Naturally in the case of duplicates (running on computers or running on biological hardware doesn't matter) it may be found that there is more than one Jesse running. It's *not* aesthetic whether, say, George Bush is you or not. He's definitely not! He doesn't have your memories, for the first thing. It's simply objectively true that some programs---or some clumps of biological matter---are Jesse Mazur and others are not. (Even though the boundary will not be exact, but fuzzy.) I disagree--George Bush certainly has a lot sensory memories (say, what certain foods taste like) in common with me, and plenty of life-event-memories which vaguely resemble mine. And I think if you scanned the entire multiverse it would be possible to find a continuum of minds with memories and lives intermediate between me and George Bush. There's not going to be a rigorous, totally well-defined procedure you can use to distinguish minds which belong to the set Jesse-Mazer-kinda-guys from minds which don't belong. Second, suppose that someone loves you, and wants the best for you. The person who loves you... If she finds out that although dead on Earth, you've been copied into a body out near Pluto, (and have the same quality of life there), she's once again happy for you. That's a pretty unhuman kind of love though--if a person I know dies, I'm sad because I'll never get to interact with them again, Then you don't know true love :-) (just kidding) because as the great novelists have explained, truly loving someone involves wanting what is best for *them*, not just that you'll get the pleasure of their company. Hence the examples where one lover dies to save the other. Yeah, but that's because those guys only believed in a single universe! Do you think anyone would buy a story where someone sacrificed their unique, unbacked-up life to save copy #348 of 1000 copies running in perfect lockstep? Do *you* think this would be a good thing to do, even though it would mean the loss of unique information (all the person's memories, thoughts, wisdom etc.) from the universe in order to prevent a death that won't remove any unique information at all from the universe? From a first-person POV, I do believe the concept of self-sacrificing unselfish love still makes sense in a multiverse, it's just that it would involve trying to maximize the other person's subjective probability of experiencing happiness in the future. This, then, is the big question: how may I appeal to your intuition in such a way that you come to agree that benefit is strictly additive? Let me resort to another torture experiment. Suppose that I invite you into my house, take you down to the torture chamber, and allow you to look through a tiny peephole inside the entire steel-encased chamber. You see some Nazis torturing a little girl, and her screams are reproduced electronically so that you hear them. You are appalled. You beg me to dissolve the chamber and put an end to the atrocity. But then I say the following peculiar thing to you: Ah, but you see, this is an *exact* molecular---down to the QM details---reenactment of an incident that happened in 1945. So you see, since it's identical, it doesn't matter whether the little girl suffers once or twice. Well, of course *I* would want to dissolve the chamber, because I think that dissolving this chamber will decrease the subjective first-person probability of having that experience of being tortured by the Nazis. I'm just saying it's not clear what difference dissolving it would make from the POV of a zombie like yourself. ;) Now contrive translated versions of that to programs, where a program here is suffering exactly the same way that it's suffering on Mars. Still feel that
RE: More is Better (was RE: another puzzle)
Jesse writes It's *not* aesthetic whether, say, George Bush is you or not. He's definitely not! He doesn't have your memories, for the first thing. It's simply objectively true that some programs---or some clumps of biological matter---are Jesse Mazur and others are not. (Even though the boundary will not be exact, but fuzzy.) I disagree--George Bush certainly has a lot sensory memories (say, what certain foods taste like) in common with me, and plenty of life-event-memories which vaguely resemble mine. And I think if you scanned the entire multiverse it would be possible to find a continuum of minds with memories and lives intermediate between me and George Bush. Of course. And that's true of anything you care to name (outside mathematics and perhaps some atomic physics, I suppose). There's not going to be a rigorous, totally well-defined procedure you can use to distinguish minds which belong to the set Jesse- Mazer-kinda-guys from minds which don't belong. I never said that there was. The allure of mathematically precise, absolutely decisive categories must be resisted for most things. Don't throw out what is important: namely that there are such things as *stars* which are different from *planets*, even though (of course, like everything) there is a continuum. We have tests which today can pick out Jesse Mazer from all other humans, six billion or so, that live on the planet. Even before we knew about DNA, it was possible for it do be determined on Earth in the year 1860 who was and who was not Abraham Lincoln. Well, of course *I* would want to dissolve the chamber, [where an exact re-enactment was taking place] because I think that dissolving this chamber will decrease the subjective first-person probability of having that experience of being tortured by the Nazis. Me too. I'm just saying it's not clear what difference dissolving it would make from the POV of a zombie like yourself. ;) Your meaning is unclear. But you may wish to just elide all this. The love of a mother who understood all the facts would not mislead her into making the correct decision: all other things being equal, (say that her daughter was to live happily in any case after 2007), she would judge that it is better for her daughter to suffer only one computation---here, say---than two, (say here and on Mars). Each time that the girl's suffering is independently and causally calculated is a terrible thing. I don't see why it's terrible, if you reject the notion of first-person probabilities. You've really only given an appeal to emotion rather than an argument here, and I would say the emotions are mostly grounded in first-person intuitions, even if you don't consciously think of them that way. It's true that all my beliefs are analytically-continued from my intuitions. I think that everyone's are. I've tried to find an entirely consistent objective description of my values. It seems to me that I have an almost entirely consistent version of the values that a lot of people share (but then, I'm biased). It started like this: I know what it's like for me to have a bad experience, and when I then look at the physics I understand that there is a certain organism that is causally going through a number of states, and that it results in a process I don't like. Conveniently, my instincts also suggest that I shouldn't like it when other people suffer too. Dropping the error-prone first person account, I then generalize on what is intrinsically bad about people suffering to a wider view that includes programs and processes. It wasn't rocket science, and many others have done so just as I have. but if you want to only think in terms of a universal objective third-person POV, then you must define better in terms of some universal objective moral system, and there doesn't seem to be any objective way to decide questions like whether multiple copies of the same happy A.I. are better than single copies. You're right, and here's how I go about it. We must be able to decide (or have an AI decide) whether or not an entity (person or program) is being benefited by a particular execution. But that's ignoring the main issue, because you haven't addressed the more primary question of *why* we should think that if a single execution of a simulation benefits the entity being simulated, then multiple executions of the same simulation benefit it even more. I have given some reasons, namely, it's a smooth extension of our values from the cases of how we'd feel on seeing repeated suffering. But it's understandable and correct for you to be asking for more. Let's suppose that we want an evaluation function, that is, a way of pronouncing judgment on the issues of the day, or of philosophic choices, or of other things that ask us our values. A main purpose of philosophy, in my opinion, is prescriptive: It should tell us how to choose in various situations.
