You apparently believe that being identical (dis)counts for positive experiences only:
By contrast, if there is one person out there experiencing suffering, that is sad. And if there are two it’s twice as sad, even if they have identical experiences. And if there are 1,000,000,000,000,000 it’s 1,000,000,000,000,000x as sad, even if they’re all identical.
I’m against any irreversible destruction of knowledge, thoughts, perspectives, adaptations, or ideas, except possibly by their owner. Such destruction is worse the more valuable the thing destroyed, the longer it took to create, and the harder it is to replace. From this basic revulsion to irreplaceable loss, hatred of murder, genocide,the hunting of endangered species to extinction, and even (say) the burning of the Library of Alexandria can all be derived as consequences.
A corollary for me is that both happiness and suffering are additive in non-identical parts only. This doesn’t really matter in the world we live in, because no two people are absolutely identical, and at present there is no easy way to calculate a difference in subjective experiences even if their observed reactions appear the same. But this may change, hypothetically, if truly identical minds can be created. My intuition is that there is no moral weight difference between 1 and 1 million of identical minds.
I’ve updated a bit over time to “okay, maybe I can just thoroughly accept that identical minds matter identically”, but I still feel a lot of resistance to that.
One thing this comment made me realize is that I feel different intuitions re: “there are a million identical people. What are the respective utility of giving one of them a candy bar, vs all of them, vs one of them getting a pinprick, vs all of them?”
vs
“You have spare compute lying around, which you might use to run a one person getting a candy, or a million, or one person getting a pinprick, or a million. How do these compare?”
What do you think about the argument that the Universe might well be infinite, and if so, your view means that nothing we do matters, since every brainstate is already instantiated somewhere? (Taken from Bostrom’s paper on the subject.)
That’s a good question, and a good example of how decompartmentalizing can lead one astray. I warmly recommend the rest of the section 2 in the above paper. Scott points out in “Could a Quantum Computer Have Subjective Experience?” that the argument can be made without any physics involved as every brain state has a finite description, and those descriptions can be enumerated, and every number can already be found in the decimal expansion of Pi, so what’s the point of anything? One objection is “but it’s not real unless it happens somewhere”, also addressed there.
You apparently believe that being identical (dis)counts for positive experiences only:
That doesn’t match my intuition at all. I tend to agree with Scott Aaronson’s approach in The Ghost in the Quantum Turing Machine, section 2.13:
A corollary for me is that both happiness and suffering are additive in non-identical parts only. This doesn’t really matter in the world we live in, because no two people are absolutely identical, and at present there is no easy way to calculate a difference in subjective experiences even if their observed reactions appear the same. But this may change, hypothetically, if truly identical minds can be created. My intuition is that there is no moral weight difference between 1 and 1 million of identical minds.
I’ve updated a bit over time to “okay, maybe I can just thoroughly accept that identical minds matter identically”, but I still feel a lot of resistance to that.
One thing this comment made me realize is that I feel different intuitions re: “there are a million identical people. What are the respective utility of giving one of them a candy bar, vs all of them, vs one of them getting a pinprick, vs all of them?”
vs
“You have spare compute lying around, which you might use to run a one person getting a candy, or a million, or one person getting a pinprick, or a million. How do these compare?”
What do you think about the argument that the Universe might well be infinite, and if so, your view means that nothing we do matters, since every brainstate is already instantiated somewhere? (Taken from Bostrom’s paper on the subject.)
That’s a good question, and a good example of how decompartmentalizing can lead one astray. I warmly recommend the rest of the section 2 in the above paper. Scott points out in “Could a Quantum Computer Have Subjective Experience?” that the argument can be made without any physics involved as every brain state has a finite description, and those descriptions can be enumerated, and every number can already be found in the decimal expansion of Pi, so what’s the point of anything? One objection is “but it’s not real unless it happens somewhere”, also addressed there.