I agree, but as you allow, your (future) specific identity amongst identical copies matters very much when symmetry is broken, e.g. one copy is to be tortured and the rest pleasured. It matters to me (my experience in the moment) even with some inevitable future destructive merge in all my copies’ future, just as it matters to me what I experience now in spite of the expectation of my permanent death within 100 years.
I agree, but as you allow, your (future) specific identity amongst identical copies matters very much when symmetry is broken, e.g. one copy is to be tortured and the rest pleasured.
I’m not sure I understand you. Obviously it matters to your future self A whether A is tortured or pleasured. And also to your current self whether there is a future self A that will be tortured. Do you think that, given that your future self A is tortured and your future self B pleasured, there is an additional fact as to whether you will be tortured or pleasured? I don’t. And I don’t see the relevance of the rest of your post to my point either.
If I see myselves at different points of time as being in collusion as to how to make all of us better off, which has been a viewpoint I’ve seen taken recently, then there is some agreement between a set of sufficiently-similar agents.
I could view the terms of that agreement as “me” and then the question becomes “what do the terms of the agreement that different sufficiently-similar instances of me serve under say about this situation.”
In which case “I” want to come up with a way of deciding, for example, how much pleasure I require per unit of torture, etc. But certainly the question “Am I being tortured or pleasured” doesn’t exactly carry over.
I thought I disagreed with you but then I showed my work and it turns out I agree with you.
If I see myselves at different points of time as being in collusion as to how to make all of us better off, which has been a viewpoint I’ve seen taken recently, then there is some agreement between a set of sufficiently-similar agents.
If this is too easy, a way to make it more fun is to do the same thing but with parts of you and coalitions of parts of you, gene/meme-eye view of evolution style. Thinking about whether there’s an important metaphysical or decision theoretic sense in which an algorithm is ‘yours’ or ‘mine’ from this perspective, while seeing if it continues to add up to normality, can lead to more fun still. And if that’s still not fun enough you can get really good at the kinds of meditation that supposedly let you intuitively grok all of this nonsense and notice the subtleties from the inside! Maybe. :D
If you’re searching for how I disagree with you, I don’t (I thought I made that clear with “as you allow”). At first you were talking about a perfectly symmetrical situation; I was interested in a less symmetrical one.
Is there an additional fact? No, and at first I was tempted to think that it matters how if there’s a continuous experience vs. a discontinuity where a scanned copy is woken up, (i.e. the original isn’t destroyed, so I might care more, as the original, about what fate lies in store for it). But I think that difference doesn’t even matter to me, assuming perfect copying, of course.
To indulge in another shift: maybe I’ll create slave copies of myself one day. I certainly won’t be allocating an even share of my resources to them (they’ll hate me for it) :)
Do you think that, given that your future self A is tortured and your future self B pleasured, there is an additional fact as to whether you will be tortured or pleasured?
Indeed, there is that additional fact.
You personally don’t know that fact; it is stipulated that until the crucial future divergence, the two selves’ experiences are identical (to them). That’s part of the setup. But Omega, who is looking on, sees two physically separate bodies, and he can label them A and B and keep track of which is which before their experiences begin to diverge.
The information about who is who exists, as part of the state of the universe. We only ignore this because we’re performing thought experiments. But suppose you really ran this experiment. Suppose that the identical experiences of the two selves involved talking to the experimenters, running through two physically distinct but identical copies of the same conversation. Then, if you didn’t think the experimenters were infallible, you might try to trick them during the conversation, to break the symmetry and reveal to you whether you were the copy who were going to be tortured.
Of course the setup stipulates that the symmetry can’t be broken. But that’s an idealization. Because of this, I think that while the results of the thought experiment are internally consistent, they may not fully apply to any physically realizable situation.
I’m not sure I understand you. Do you think that right now there exist an infinite number of physically separate bodies that collectively make up current you and all have identical experiences (including this conversation), that exactly one of those bodies is the real (?) you, and that every distinct possible future you can be traced back to one particular body or a distinct subset of those physical bodies? If so what is your basis for believing that? And is this true for any possible mechanism that could produce copies, or do you refuse to acknowledge copies that are produced in a way that doesn’t preserve this quality as possible yous?
Do you think that right now there exist an infinite number of physically separate bodies that collectively make up current you
No, I don’t think it’s normally the case (I presume you’re referring to quantum branches?).
But the Anthropic Trilemma scenario we’re discussing explicitly postulates this: that physically separate but identical copies of my body will be constructed, have identical experiences for a while, and then diverge.
If this scenario is actually implemented, then it will be necessarily true that (given complete knowledge of the universe) every distinct future body can be traced back to a past body at a point before the experiences diverge.
This would not be true, though, in Eliezer’s other thought experiment about persons implemented as 2D circuits that can be split along their thickness.
But in the scenario here, if there are two bodies and one is going to be tortured tomorrow, there can be a fact of the matter today about which one it is, even if the bodies themselves don’t know it. Even though their presents are identical (to the limit that they can experience), the fact that their futures are going to be different can make it necessary to talk about two separate persons existing all along.
That’s not what I was talking about though, I was talking about the perspective of the root. Obviously once you already are in a branch there is a fact as to whether you are in that branch, even if you can’t tell yourself.
But the Anthropic Trilemma scenario we’re discussing explicitly postulates this: that physically separate but identical copies of my body will be constructed, have identical experiences for a while, and then diverge.
Not as far as I can tell. The first experience after being copied is either winning the lottery or not.
I agree, but as you allow, your (future) specific identity amongst identical copies matters very much when symmetry is broken, e.g. one copy is to be tortured and the rest pleasured. It matters to me (my experience in the moment) even with some inevitable future destructive merge in all my copies’ future, just as it matters to me what I experience now in spite of the expectation of my permanent death within 100 years.
I’m not sure I understand you. Obviously it matters to your future self A whether A is tortured or pleasured. And also to your current self whether there is a future self A that will be tortured. Do you think that, given that your future self A is tortured and your future self B pleasured, there is an additional fact as to whether you will be tortured or pleasured? I don’t. And I don’t see the relevance of the rest of your post to my point either.
If I see myselves at different points of time as being in collusion as to how to make all of us better off, which has been a viewpoint I’ve seen taken recently, then there is some agreement between a set of sufficiently-similar agents.
I could view the terms of that agreement as “me” and then the question becomes “what do the terms of the agreement that different sufficiently-similar instances of me serve under say about this situation.”
In which case “I” want to come up with a way of deciding, for example, how much pleasure I require per unit of torture, etc. But certainly the question “Am I being tortured or pleasured” doesn’t exactly carry over.
I thought I disagreed with you but then I showed my work and it turns out I agree with you.
If this is too easy, a way to make it more fun is to do the same thing but with parts of you and coalitions of parts of you, gene/meme-eye view of evolution style. Thinking about whether there’s an important metaphysical or decision theoretic sense in which an algorithm is ‘yours’ or ‘mine’ from this perspective, while seeing if it continues to add up to normality, can lead to more fun still. And if that’s still not fun enough you can get really good at the kinds of meditation that supposedly let you intuitively grok all of this nonsense and notice the subtleties from the inside! Maybe. :D
If you’re searching for how I disagree with you, I don’t (I thought I made that clear with “as you allow”). At first you were talking about a perfectly symmetrical situation; I was interested in a less symmetrical one.
Is there an additional fact? No, and at first I was tempted to think that it matters how if there’s a continuous experience vs. a discontinuity where a scanned copy is woken up, (i.e. the original isn’t destroyed, so I might care more, as the original, about what fate lies in store for it). But I think that difference doesn’t even matter to me, assuming perfect copying, of course.
To indulge in another shift: maybe I’ll create slave copies of myself one day. I certainly won’t be allocating an even share of my resources to them (they’ll hate me for it) :)
Indeed, there is that additional fact.
You personally don’t know that fact; it is stipulated that until the crucial future divergence, the two selves’ experiences are identical (to them). That’s part of the setup. But Omega, who is looking on, sees two physically separate bodies, and he can label them A and B and keep track of which is which before their experiences begin to diverge.
The information about who is who exists, as part of the state of the universe. We only ignore this because we’re performing thought experiments. But suppose you really ran this experiment. Suppose that the identical experiences of the two selves involved talking to the experimenters, running through two physically distinct but identical copies of the same conversation. Then, if you didn’t think the experimenters were infallible, you might try to trick them during the conversation, to break the symmetry and reveal to you whether you were the copy who were going to be tortured.
Of course the setup stipulates that the symmetry can’t be broken. But that’s an idealization. Because of this, I think that while the results of the thought experiment are internally consistent, they may not fully apply to any physically realizable situation.
I’m not sure I understand you. Do you think that right now there exist an infinite number of physically separate bodies that collectively make up current you and all have identical experiences (including this conversation), that exactly one of those bodies is the real (?) you, and that every distinct possible future you can be traced back to one particular body or a distinct subset of those physical bodies? If so what is your basis for believing that? And is this true for any possible mechanism that could produce copies, or do you refuse to acknowledge copies that are produced in a way that doesn’t preserve this quality as possible yous?
No, I don’t think it’s normally the case (I presume you’re referring to quantum branches?).
But the Anthropic Trilemma scenario we’re discussing explicitly postulates this: that physically separate but identical copies of my body will be constructed, have identical experiences for a while, and then diverge.
If this scenario is actually implemented, then it will be necessarily true that (given complete knowledge of the universe) every distinct future body can be traced back to a past body at a point before the experiences diverge.
This would not be true, though, in Eliezer’s other thought experiment about persons implemented as 2D circuits that can be split along their thickness.
But in the scenario here, if there are two bodies and one is going to be tortured tomorrow, there can be a fact of the matter today about which one it is, even if the bodies themselves don’t know it. Even though their presents are identical (to the limit that they can experience), the fact that their futures are going to be different can make it necessary to talk about two separate persons existing all along.
That’s not what I was talking about though, I was talking about the perspective of the root. Obviously once you already are in a branch there is a fact as to whether you are in that branch, even if you can’t tell yourself.
Not as far as I can tell. The first experience after being copied is either winning the lottery or not.