I’m currently trying to avoid having opinions on this whole subject. I kept thinking it all around in circles; I’m now letting my back-brain see if it can come up with any insights. But yours is one of the ideas that passed my mind.
There’s an interesting interaction of “identical copies don’t mean anything” with one of the problem-of-identity solutions you see around this site, which is that you should treat copies and simulations of yourself as yourself, indeed in proportion to how closely they resemble you. If an identical- or near-copy of me has moral weight when I’m trying to decide whether to one-box, or defect in the Prisoner’s Dilemma, or the like, it would seem to have to have the same weight in questions like this one, or vice-versa.
I would be curious what you think of my comment elsewhere in this thread: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/9xw/33_holes_and_1031031_pigeons_or_vice_versa/5vcq
I’m currently trying to avoid having opinions on this whole subject. I kept thinking it all around in circles; I’m now letting my back-brain see if it can come up with any insights. But yours is one of the ideas that passed my mind.
There’s an interesting interaction of “identical copies don’t mean anything” with one of the problem-of-identity solutions you see around this site, which is that you should treat copies and simulations of yourself as yourself, indeed in proportion to how closely they resemble you. If an identical- or near-copy of me has moral weight when I’m trying to decide whether to one-box, or defect in the Prisoner’s Dilemma, or the like, it would seem to have to have the same weight in questions like this one, or vice-versa.
Agreed.
But don’t avoid opinions, you can form some and always preface them with caveats to get a sword out of that iron.