I may be in the minority, but I reject “wrong” and “immoral” as boolean values. You have to quantify the effects on your world of knowing the results of the weighted range of experiments and compare to the “moral cost” of causing pain for a being (again, the net value of that hour of created life, weighted by probability). But say I take your point and agree that the net value of the range of your experiments is negative, and you “should” not perform them.
The computations in the second situation have the same fidelity and granularity as the first, and are morally equivalent. Your X is bigger (and therefore takes more to compute) than A(S), exactly because it contains both worlds. At any point in the physics simulation, you can subtract out R_t and get A(S)_t.
The second is morally reprehensible to exactly the same degree as the first.
The computations in the second situation have the same fidelity and granularity as the first, and are morally equivalent. Your X is bigger (and therefore takes more to compute) than A(S), exactly because it contains both worlds. At any point in the physics simulation, you can subtract out Rt and get A(S)t.
OK, but this only moves the problem to a different place. Say I can find an operation that let’s me transform the data irreversibly, in such a way that I can still get my computations and answers done, but no way of getting the original states back. What would you say then?
I may be in the minority, but I reject “wrong” and “immoral” as boolean values. You have to quantify the effects on your world of knowing the results of the weighted range of experiments and compare to the “moral cost” of causing pain for a being (again, the net value of that hour of created life, weighted by probability). But say I take your point and agree that the net value of the range of your experiments is negative, and you “should” not perform them.
The computations in the second situation have the same fidelity and granularity as the first, and are morally equivalent. Your X is bigger (and therefore takes more to compute) than A(S), exactly because it contains both worlds. At any point in the physics simulation, you can subtract out R_t and get A(S)_t.
The second is morally reprehensible to exactly the same degree as the first.
OK, but this only moves the problem to a different place. Say I can find an operation that let’s me transform the data irreversibly, in such a way that I can still get my computations and answers done, but no way of getting the original states back. What would you say then?
No part of his objection hinged on reversibility, only the same linearity assumption you rely on to get a result at all.