I’m thirteen years late to this conversation, but am I the only person who thinks that B is obviously the correct choice?!
First, all copies will make the same decision, which means I can safely make a choice for all of us knowing that it will be unanimous and I am not coercing anyone.
Second, the certainty of killing 99 beings is far more horrible than the possibility of killing 100 together with the possibility of saving 100. In the former case there is a guarantee of a bad outcome, whereas in the latter there is the possibility, however remote, of success, which is clearly better.
Third, in the former case, choice A, all copies of me would be agreeing to doom all but one of our number to death, which is rather hellish and also selfish—each one secretly wants to be the one who survives, and is willing to throw all the others under the bus to do so, and we all know this too, which would make the whole experience even more dreadful. But in the latter case, choice B, we would be making a heroic gamble which might lead to all of our deaths, or to our salvation, but either way we’d be doing it together. Isn’t that intuitively more noble?
There’s a movie on Netflix called Circle which has a similar premise. In it, a couple dozen people wake up to find themselves arranged in a circle. Every minute, someone dies, and they quickly figure out that they are voting on who to kill next. At the end of the movie
they realize that one ‘person’ is not voting, an unborn baby inside a pregnant woman. Two teams emerge: one team of callous people realize that the baby can be exploited to be the last person standing, while the other team wants to pre-emptively kill the baby to ensure a more deserving person is the survivor.
This isn’t obvious until the very end of the movie, so if you want to watch it, maybe don’t read the spoiler.
I’m thirteen years late to this conversation, but am I the only person who thinks that B is obviously the correct choice?!
First, all copies will make the same decision, which means I can safely make a choice for all of us knowing that it will be unanimous and I am not coercing anyone.
Second, the certainty of killing 99 beings is far more horrible than the possibility of killing 100 together with the possibility of saving 100. In the former case there is a guarantee of a bad outcome, whereas in the latter there is the possibility, however remote, of success, which is clearly better.
Third, in the former case, choice A, all copies of me would be agreeing to doom all but one of our number to death, which is rather hellish and also selfish—each one secretly wants to be the one who survives, and is willing to throw all the others under the bus to do so, and we all know this too, which would make the whole experience even more dreadful. But in the latter case, choice B, we would be making a heroic gamble which might lead to all of our deaths, or to our salvation, but either way we’d be doing it together. Isn’t that intuitively more noble?
There’s a movie on Netflix called Circle which has a similar premise. In it, a couple dozen people wake up to find themselves arranged in a circle. Every minute, someone dies, and they quickly figure out that they are voting on who to kill next. At the end of the movie
they realize that one ‘person’ is not voting, an unborn baby inside a pregnant woman. Two teams emerge: one team of callous people realize that the baby can be exploited to be the last person standing, while the other team wants to pre-emptively kill the baby to ensure a more deserving person is the survivor.
This isn’t obvious until the very end of the movie, so if you want to watch it, maybe don’t read the spoiler.
(It’s exclamation point then greater than symbol, not the other way around. Answer in FAQ. Have edited your comment to add it.)
Ah, I am dumb, thanks.