I think in practice I’d probably set N pretty high (10? 100? 10k?) - it’s hard to know what one will do in extreme situations, particularly such unlikely ones.
But an alternative question might be: what should a rational entity do? The answer to this alternative is much easier to compute, and I think it’s where the N=1 or N=2 answers are coming from. Would you agree that a creature evolved in an environment with such teleporter-and-duplicators would casually use them at N=1 and eagerly use them at N=2?
Yes, of course such a creature would agree at N=2 and 1. It’s a direct way to maximize number of descendants.
Don’t describe it as the rational choice though. Rationality has nothing to do with goals. It’s the right thing to do only if your goal is to maximize the number of descendants, or clones.
I agree with you that an entity with different goals would behave differently, and that evolution’s “goal” isn’t (entirely) the same as my goals.
However, there’s a sense of coherence with the physical world that I admire about evolution’s decisions, and I want to emulate that coherence in choosing my own goals.
The fact that evolution values “duplicate perfectly, then destroy original” equivalently to “teleport” isn’t a conclusive argument I should value them equivalently, but it’s a suggestive argument towards that conclusion. The fact that my evolutionary environment never contained anything like that is suggestive that my gut feeling about it isn’t likely to be helpful.
The balance of evidence seems to be against any such thing as continuous experience existing—an adaptive illusion analogous to the blind spot. Valuing continuous experience highly just doesn’t seem to cut nature at its joints.
I think in practice I’d probably set N pretty high (10? 100? 10k?) - it’s hard to know what one will do in extreme situations, particularly such unlikely ones.
But an alternative question might be: what should a rational entity do? The answer to this alternative is much easier to compute, and I think it’s where the N=1 or N=2 answers are coming from. Would you agree that a creature evolved in an environment with such teleporter-and-duplicators would casually use them at N=1 and eagerly use them at N=2?
Yes, of course such a creature would agree at N=2 and 1. It’s a direct way to maximize number of descendants.
Don’t describe it as the rational choice though. Rationality has nothing to do with goals. It’s the right thing to do only if your goal is to maximize the number of descendants, or clones.
I agree with you that an entity with different goals would behave differently, and that evolution’s “goal” isn’t (entirely) the same as my goals.
However, there’s a sense of coherence with the physical world that I admire about evolution’s decisions, and I want to emulate that coherence in choosing my own goals.
The fact that evolution values “duplicate perfectly, then destroy original” equivalently to “teleport” isn’t a conclusive argument I should value them equivalently, but it’s a suggestive argument towards that conclusion. The fact that my evolutionary environment never contained anything like that is suggestive that my gut feeling about it isn’t likely to be helpful.
The balance of evidence seems to be against any such thing as continuous experience existing—an adaptive illusion analogous to the blind spot. Valuing continuous experience highly just doesn’t seem to cut nature at its joints.
I think you run into logistical problems when N gets large, by the way.