When you’re faced with numbers like 3^^^3, scope insensitivity is the correct response. A googolplex is already enough to hold every possible configuration of Life as we know it. “Hamlet, but with extra commas in these three places, performed by intelligent starfish” is in there somewhere in over a googol different varieties. What, then, does 3^^^3 add except more copies of the same?
Nothing, if your definition of a copy is sufficiently general :-)
Am I understanding you right that you believe in something like a computational theory of identity and think there’s some sort of bound on how complex something we’d attribute moral patienthood or interestingness to can get? I agree with the former, but don’t see much reason for believing the latter.
I have no idea if there is such a bound. I will never have any idea if there is such a bound, and I suspect that neither will any entity in this universe. Given that fact, I’d rather make the assumption that doesn’t turn me stupid when Pascal’s Wager comes up.
When you’re faced with numbers like 3^^^3, scope insensitivity is the correct response. A googolplex is already enough to hold every possible configuration of Life as we know it. “Hamlet, but with extra commas in these three places, performed by intelligent starfish” is in there somewhere in over a googol different varieties. What, then, does 3^^^3 add except more copies of the same?
Nothing, if your definition of a copy is sufficiently general :-)
Am I understanding you right that you believe in something like a computational theory of identity and think there’s some sort of bound on how complex something we’d attribute moral patienthood or interestingness to can get? I agree with the former, but don’t see much reason for believing the latter.
I have no idea if there is such a bound. I will never have any idea if there is such a bound, and I suspect that neither will any entity in this universe. Given that fact, I’d rather make the assumption that doesn’t turn me stupid when Pascal’s Wager comes up.