Sure. Then the answer to my question: “individuals who count for one decision may not count in another even if they still exist?” is yes. Agreed?
(Specifically, the semi-clones still exist in A and B, they just haven’t had their memories swapped out in such a way such that they would count as clones)
If you agree, then there isn’t an issue. This test case was designed to create an issue for theories that insist that this ought not to occur.
Why is this important? Because it allows us to create no-win scenarios. Suppose we go back to the genie problem where pressing the button creates semi-clones. If you wish to be pelted by eggs, you know that you are the original, so you regret not wishing for the perfect life. The objection you made before doesn’t hold as you don’t care about the semi-clones. But if you wish for the perfect life, you then know that you are overwhelmingly likely to be a semi-clone, so you regret that decision too.
Yeah, now I see what kind of weirdness you’re trying to point out, and it seems to me that you can recreate it without any clones or predictions or even amnesia. Just choose ten selfish people and put them to sleep. Select one at random, wake him up and ask him to choose between two buttons to press. If he presses button 1, give him a mild electric shock, then the experiment ends and everyone wakes up and goes home. But if he presses button 2, give him a candy bar, wake up the rest of the participants in separate rooms and offer the same choice to each, except this time button 1 leads to nothing and button 2 leads to shock. The setup is known in advance to all participants, and let’s assume that getting shocked is as unpleasant as the candy bar is pleasant.
In this problem UDT says you should press button 1. Yeah, you’d feel kinda regretful having to do that, knowing that it makes you the only person to be offered the choice. You could just press button 2, get a nice candy bar instead of a nasty shock, and screw everyone else! But I still feel that UDT is more likely to be right than some other decision theory telling you to press button 2, given what that leads to.
Perhaps it is, but I think it is worth spending some time investigating this and identifying the advantages and disadvantages of different resolutions.
Hmm, I’m not sure that it works. If you press 1, it doesn’t mean that you’re the first person woken. You need them to be something like semi-clones for that. And the memory trick is only for the Irrelevant Considerations argument. That leaves the prediction element which isn’t strictly necessary, but allows the other agents in your reference class (if you choose perfect life) to exist at the same time the original is making its decision, which makes this result even more surprising.
Agree about the semi-clones part. This is similar to the Prisoner’s Dilemma: if you know that everyone else cooperates (presses button 1), you’re better off defecting (pressing button 2). Usually I prefer to talk about problems where everyone has the same preference over outcomes, because in such problems UDT is a Nash equilibrium. Whereas in problems where people have selfish preferences but cooperate due to symmetry, like this problem or the symmetric Prisoner’s Dilemma, UDT still kinda works but stops being a Nash equilibrium. That’s what I was trying to point out in this post.
Hmm, now the problem seems equivalent to this:
A) Get 100 utility
B) Get 50 utility
C) Create many clones and give each −1000 utility
If you’re indifferent to mere existence of clones otherwise, you should choose A. Seems trivial, no?
Sure. Then the answer to my question: “individuals who count for one decision may not count in another even if they still exist?” is yes. Agreed?
(Specifically, the semi-clones still exist in A and B, they just haven’t had their memories swapped out in such a way such that they would count as clones)
If you agree, then there isn’t an issue. This test case was designed to create an issue for theories that insist that this ought not to occur.
Why is this important? Because it allows us to create no-win scenarios. Suppose we go back to the genie problem where pressing the button creates semi-clones. If you wish to be pelted by eggs, you know that you are the original, so you regret not wishing for the perfect life. The objection you made before doesn’t hold as you don’t care about the semi-clones. But if you wish for the perfect life, you then know that you are overwhelmingly likely to be a semi-clone, so you regret that decision too.
Yeah, now I see what kind of weirdness you’re trying to point out, and it seems to me that you can recreate it without any clones or predictions or even amnesia. Just choose ten selfish people and put them to sleep. Select one at random, wake him up and ask him to choose between two buttons to press. If he presses button 1, give him a mild electric shock, then the experiment ends and everyone wakes up and goes home. But if he presses button 2, give him a candy bar, wake up the rest of the participants in separate rooms and offer the same choice to each, except this time button 1 leads to nothing and button 2 leads to shock. The setup is known in advance to all participants, and let’s assume that getting shocked is as unpleasant as the candy bar is pleasant.
In this problem UDT says you should press button 1. Yeah, you’d feel kinda regretful having to do that, knowing that it makes you the only person to be offered the choice. You could just press button 2, get a nice candy bar instead of a nasty shock, and screw everyone else! But I still feel that UDT is more likely to be right than some other decision theory telling you to press button 2, given what that leads to.
Perhaps it is, but I think it is worth spending some time investigating this and identifying the advantages and disadvantages of different resolutions.
Hmm, I’m not sure that it works. If you press 1, it doesn’t mean that you’re the first person woken. You need them to be something like semi-clones for that. And the memory trick is only for the Irrelevant Considerations argument. That leaves the prediction element which isn’t strictly necessary, but allows the other agents in your reference class (if you choose perfect life) to exist at the same time the original is making its decision, which makes this result even more surprising.
Agree about the semi-clones part. This is similar to the Prisoner’s Dilemma: if you know that everyone else cooperates (presses button 1), you’re better off defecting (pressing button 2). Usually I prefer to talk about problems where everyone has the same preference over outcomes, because in such problems UDT is a Nash equilibrium. Whereas in problems where people have selfish preferences but cooperate due to symmetry, like this problem or the symmetric Prisoner’s Dilemma, UDT still kinda works but stops being a Nash equilibrium. That’s what I was trying to point out in this post.