Eliezer has the same problem here as with the zombie argument. The point isn’t that there are zombie worlds, or soul swap worlds. Saying that something is logically possible is nowhere near saying that something is actual. It is logically possible for someone to be kidnapped, have his brain placed in a vat, and information fed in producing the impression that his experiences are in precise continuity with his experiences the day before being kidnapped. Of course, he will have no way to notice this. In fact, it is logically possible that that this just happened to you, the reader, in the middle of this sentence, with your vat experiences beginning with the words “the reader.”
The fact that there is absolutely no way to prove or disprove this scenario does not make it logically impossible. It just makes it highly improbable. Likewise, the soul swap world, and the zombie world, are highly improbable. This is no reason at all to call them logically impossible.
This whole thing is simply another case of Eliezer’s overconfidence: if there is something that one should be somewhat confident of, then he is extremely confident of it. If there is something that one should be extremely confident about, such as that there are no zombies in the world, then he is infinitely certain about it: he thinks it is logically impossible.
Eliezer has the same problem here as with the zombie argument. The point isn’t that there are zombie worlds, or soul swap worlds. Saying that something is logically possible is nowhere near saying that something is actual. It is logically possible for someone to be kidnapped, have his brain placed in a vat, and information fed in producing the impression that his experiences are in precise continuity with his experiences the day before being kidnapped. Of course, he will have no way to notice this. In fact, it is logically possible that that this just happened to you, the reader, in the middle of this sentence, with your vat experiences beginning with the words “the reader.”
The fact that there is absolutely no way to prove or disprove this scenario does not make it logically impossible. It just makes it highly improbable. Likewise, the soul swap world, and the zombie world, are highly improbable. This is no reason at all to call them logically impossible.
This whole thing is simply another case of Eliezer’s overconfidence: if there is something that one should be somewhat confident of, then he is extremely confident of it. If there is something that one should be extremely confident about, such as that there are no zombies in the world, then he is infinitely certain about it: he thinks it is logically impossible.