Being a hopeless munchkin, I will note that the thought experiment has an obvious loophole: for the choice to truly be a choice, we would have to assume, somewhat arbitrarily, that using the duplication lever will disintegrate the machinery. Else, you could pull the lever to create a duplicate who’ll deliver the message, and *then* the you at the bottom of the well could rip up the machinery and take their shot at climbing up.
We don’t actually know the machine works more than once, do we? It creates “a” duplicate of you “when” you pull the lever. That doesn’t necessarily imply that it outputs additional duplicates if you keep pulling the lever. Maybe it has a limited store of raw materials to make the duplicates from, who knows.
Besides, I was just munchkinning myself out of a situation where a sentient individual has to die (i.e. a version of myself). Creating an army up there may have its uses but does not relate to the solving of the initial problem. Unless we are proposing the army make a human ladder? Seems unpleasant.
Being a hopeless munchkin, I will note that the thought experiment has an obvious loophole: for the choice to truly be a choice, we would have to assume, somewhat arbitrarily, that using the duplication lever will disintegrate the machinery. Else, you could pull the lever to create a duplicate who’ll deliver the message, and *then* the you at the bottom of the well could rip up the machinery and take their shot at climbing up.
You feeble attempts at munchkining are noted and scorned at. The proper munchkin would pull the lever again and again, creating an army of yous...
We don’t actually know the machine works more than once, do we? It creates “a” duplicate of you “when” you pull the lever. That doesn’t necessarily imply that it outputs additional duplicates if you keep pulling the lever. Maybe it has a limited store of raw materials to make the duplicates from, who knows.
Besides, I was just munchkinning myself out of a situation where a sentient individual has to die (i.e. a version of myself). Creating an army up there may have its uses but does not relate to the solving of the initial problem. Unless we are proposing the army make a human ladder? Seems unpleasant.