...I see. That doesn’t change my answer, as it happens; my clone dies, yes, and you bear moral culpability for it, but it is better for one to make it out (relatively) unscathed than for the only survivor to be traumatized. In the new version, I would prefer there be only one hour of torture between us, and accept the first option.
See, the thing is: in my utility function, I don’t have a special ranking for “my” experiences over everyone else’s. When I do the math, I come out paying a lot more attention to my own situation for purely pragmatic reasons.
Even given your theory and your utility function, I don’t see how your clone’s 10 hours of torture and subsequent death would leave you traumatized. Isn’t it best for the survivor to have experienced no torture at all (so we’d torture the clone)?
Also, regarding Scenario B: imagine that I decided to get in on it, only with a variation. Instead of duplicating you and offering those two options—either your original be tortured for an hour or your duplicate be tortured for ten—I created an entirely new individual, no more similar to you than any other human being, and gave you the choice between being tortured yourself for an hour and the new guy being tortured for ten.
Which would you choose? Me, I think it’s perfectly obvious that it is better for less torture to occur.
Better for whom? To me it’s perfectly obvious that it’s better for me to have someone else tortured, and I would choose that. I would only choose to be hurt myself if the tradeoff was very unequal (a speck in the eye for me, ten hours of torture for him), and even then I would soon stop agreeing to be hurt if I had to face such a choice repeatedly.
If someone were to mount a campaign to stop your entire torturing project, and if I could participate by being hurt (but not by endangering my life), then I would agree to pay a much higher price. But that’s because such participation is a form of social capital and also helps enforce social norms elsewhere (this is both an evolutionary and a personal reason).
I’m sorry—in Scenario A (I suffer torture, or duplicate suffers more torture and is killed), I would choose the second option for essentially the reasons you propose. In Scenario B (I’m duplicated, then either I suffer torture or duplicate suffers more torture, then we both live), I would choose the first option because that’s less torture. I don’t see the complexity.
Making sure I was understood correctly: after the clone is killed (which happens in both scenarios), the only identifiable “you” is the survivor. Therefore any considerations of lasting trauma should apply to the survivor, or not all. So to minimize trauma (without minimizing the amount of torture), we should ensure that the survivor—who is known even before the clone is killed—is the one who is not tortured.
I was under the impression that the clone survived in the second scenario—that that was the difference between the two scenarios. This might explain some confusion about my answers, if this was a confusion.
...I see. That doesn’t change my answer, as it happens; my clone dies, yes, and you bear moral culpability for it, but it is better for one to make it out (relatively) unscathed than for the only survivor to be traumatized. In the new version, I would prefer there be only one hour of torture between us, and accept the first option.
See, the thing is: in my utility function, I don’t have a special ranking for “my” experiences over everyone else’s. When I do the math, I come out paying a lot more attention to my own situation for purely pragmatic reasons.
Even given your theory and your utility function, I don’t see how your clone’s 10 hours of torture and subsequent death would leave you traumatized. Isn’t it best for the survivor to have experienced no torture at all (so we’d torture the clone)?
Also, regarding Scenario B: imagine that I decided to get in on it, only with a variation. Instead of duplicating you and offering those two options—either your original be tortured for an hour or your duplicate be tortured for ten—I created an entirely new individual, no more similar to you than any other human being, and gave you the choice between being tortured yourself for an hour and the new guy being tortured for ten.
Which would you choose? Me, I think it’s perfectly obvious that it is better for less torture to occur.
Better for whom? To me it’s perfectly obvious that it’s better for me to have someone else tortured, and I would choose that. I would only choose to be hurt myself if the tradeoff was very unequal (a speck in the eye for me, ten hours of torture for him), and even then I would soon stop agreeing to be hurt if I had to face such a choice repeatedly.
If someone were to mount a campaign to stop your entire torturing project, and if I could participate by being hurt (but not by endangering my life), then I would agree to pay a much higher price. But that’s because such participation is a form of social capital and also helps enforce social norms elsewhere (this is both an evolutionary and a personal reason).
I’m sorry—in Scenario A (I suffer torture, or duplicate suffers more torture and is killed), I would choose the second option for essentially the reasons you propose. In Scenario B (I’m duplicated, then either I suffer torture or duplicate suffers more torture, then we both live), I would choose the first option because that’s less torture. I don’t see the complexity.
Making sure I was understood correctly: after the clone is killed (which happens in both scenarios), the only identifiable “you” is the survivor. Therefore any considerations of lasting trauma should apply to the survivor, or not all. So to minimize trauma (without minimizing the amount of torture), we should ensure that the survivor—who is known even before the clone is killed—is the one who is not tortured.
I was under the impression that the clone survived in the second scenario—that that was the difference between the two scenarios. This might explain some confusion about my answers, if this was a confusion.
No, the scenarios I originally proposed were:
A clone is made.
2a. If you choose, you’re tortured for an hour.
2b. Or if you so choose, the clone is tortured for ten hours.
3, Ten hours from now, the clone is destroyed in any case.