But surely you must have some constraints about what you consider future selves—some weighting function that prevents you from simply reducing yourself to a utilon-busybeaver.
As far as I can tell, the only things that keep me from reducing myself to a utilon-busybeaver are
a) insufficiently detailed information on the likelihoods of each potential future-me function, and
b) an internally inconsistent utility function
What I’m addressing here is b) - my valuation of a universe composed entirely of minds that most-value a universe composed entirely of themselves is path-dependent. My initial reaction is that that universe is very negative on my current function, but I find it hard to believe that it’s truly of larger magnitude than {number of minds}*{length of existence of this universe}*{number of utilons per mind}*{my personal utility of another mind’s utilon}
Even for a very small positive value for the last (and it’s definitely not negative or 0 - I’d need some justification to torture someone to death), the sheer scale of the other values should trivialize my personal preference that the universe include discovery and exploration.
But surely you must have some constraints about what you consider future selves—some weighting function that prevents you from simply reducing yourself to a utilon-busybeaver.
As far as I can tell, the only things that keep me from reducing myself to a utilon-busybeaver are a) insufficiently detailed information on the likelihoods of each potential future-me function, and b) an internally inconsistent utility function
What I’m addressing here is b) - my valuation of a universe composed entirely of minds that most-value a universe composed entirely of themselves is path-dependent. My initial reaction is that that universe is very negative on my current function, but I find it hard to believe that it’s truly of larger magnitude than {number of minds}*{length of existence of this universe}*{number of utilons per mind}*{my personal utility of another mind’s utilon}
Even for a very small positive value for the last (and it’s definitely not negative or 0 - I’d need some justification to torture someone to death), the sheer scale of the other values should trivialize my personal preference that the universe include discovery and exploration.