Would you, on the grounds that this person has value in himself, go to the appointed spot every week with a bag of apples?
I would see this as a potential charitable act, in competition with other charities. As such it’s not particularly efficient: my time plus a bag of apples weekly to keep him free of scurvy is nowhere near as good as something like the AMF or SCI.
So perhaps the value of keeping him living is too low for the cost, and similarly we could have this for an emulated person. But the important thing is that they do have a value independent of their effect on others, and there may be cases where supporting emulations could be the most effective charity.
It’s still a problem, in that valuing a computational process remains somewhat bizarre. Questions like whether it’s still valuable to run exactly identical copies or rerun the same computation repeatedly from the same state just don’t come up with people.
I would see this as a potential charitable act, in competition with other charities. As such it’s not particularly efficient: my time plus a bag of apples weekly to keep him free of scurvy is nowhere near as good as something like the AMF or SCI.
So perhaps the value of keeping him living is too low for the cost, and similarly we could have this for an emulated person. But the important thing is that they do have a value independent of their effect on others, and there may be cases where supporting emulations could be the most effective charity.
Well, there you go then: Now we have a standard problem in efficient charity. No new intuitions required.
It’s still a problem, in that valuing a computational process remains somewhat bizarre. Questions like whether it’s still valuable to run exactly identical copies or rerun the same computation repeatedly from the same state just don’t come up with people.