I want at least 11 copies of myself with full copy-copy / world-world interaction. This is a way of scaling myself. I’d want the copies to diverge—actually that’s the whole point (each copy handles a different line of work.) I’m mature enough, so I’m quite confident that the copies won’t diverge to the point when their top-level values / goals would become incompatible, so I expect the copies to cooperate.
As for how much I’m willing to work for each copy, that’s a good question. A year of pickaxe trench-digging seems to be way too cheap and easy for a fully functioning copy. On the other hand, if I want 11 copies, that’s 11 years of pickaxing. So, there’s a risk that I’d lose all my purpose in progress, and deteriorate mentally and physically. The quality of copies would also deteriorate due to the degradation of original me due to accumulating years of pick-axing.
Regarding the copy / copy interacton: currently I see little value in non-interacting copies locked in their worlds, other than scaling up my ability to safely explore the world and learn from ‘my own’ mistakes (which assumes that their worlds must diverge.) BTW, does your constraint of no copy-copy interaction mean that I myself can’t interact with the copies?
As for any longer-term implications, I can’t say anything deep—I haven’t put much thought into this.
(This idea first occurred to me about 7 years ago, way before I started to read OB / LW, or anything like that. I was overloaded with work and surrounded with uncooperative employees and co-founders lacking domain experience.)
Actually to get 11 yous (or indeed 16 yous) in your scenario would take only 4 years of pickaxing.
After year 1 there are two of you. Both keep pickaxing.
After year 2 there are four of you.
After year 3, 8
After year 4, 16
(this could be speeded up slightly if you could add together the work of different copies. With that addition you’d have 11 copies in just over 3 years)
If the contract arbitrarily denies my copies rights, then I’m not sure I want to risk it at all.
I mean, what if I’ve missed that it also says “your copies aren’t allowed to refuse any command given by Dr. Evil”?
Now if my copies simply CAN’T pickaxe, what with being non-physical, that’s fair enough. But the idea seemed to be that the copies had full worlds in which they lived; in which case within their world they are every bit physical.
A contract denying specifically the right to contribute man-hours towards my share of pickaxing and no other rights would be fine with me. I’d have to watch the wording though. As for missing anything when reading it, such a contract will get very, very serious examination by myself and the best lawyers I can get.
That would be an pretty big “original privilege” :-)
Generally, when I think about making copies, I assume that the status of being “original” would be washed away and I would find myself existing with some amount of certainty (say 50% to 100%) that I was the copy. They I try to think about how I’d feel about having been created by someone who has all my memories/skills/tendencies/defects but has a metaphysically arbitrary (though perhaps emotionally or legally endorsed) claim to being “more authentic” than me by virtue of some historical fact of “mere physical continuity”.
I would only expect a copy to cooperate with my visions for what my copy “should do” if I’m excited by the prospect of getting to do that—if I’m kinda hoping that after the copy process I wake up as the copy because the copy is going to have a really interesting life.
In practice, I would expect that what I’d really have to do is write up two “divergence plans” for each future version of me, that seem equally desirable, then copy, then re-negotiate with my copy over the details of the divergence plans (because I imagine the practicalities of two of us existing might reveal some false assumptions in the first draft of the plans), and finally we’d flip a coin to find out which plan each of us is assigned to.
I guess… If only one of us gets the “right of making more copies” I’d want the original contact to make “copyright” re-assignable after the copying event, so I could figure out whether “copyright” is more of a privilege or a burden, and what the appropriate compensation is for taking up the burden or losing the privilege.
ETA:: Perhaps our preferences would diverge during negotiation? That actually seems like something to hope for because then a simple cake cutting algorithm could probably be used to ensure the assignment to a divergence plan was actually a positive sum interaction :-)
Presumably, each copy of you would also want to be part of a copy group, so if the year of pickaxe trench-digging seems to be a good idea at the end of it, your copy will presumably be willing to also put in a year.
Now we get to the question of whether you can choose the time of when the copy is made. You’d probably want a copy from before the year of trenching.
If you have to make copies of your current moment, then one of you would experience two consecutive years of trenching.
The good news is that the number of you doubles each year, so each of you only has to do 4 or 5 years to get a group of 12.
I want at least 11 copies of myself with full copy-copy / world-world interaction. This is a way of scaling myself. I’d want the copies to diverge—actually that’s the whole point (each copy handles a different line of work.) I’m mature enough, so I’m quite confident that the copies won’t diverge to the point when their top-level values / goals would become incompatible, so I expect the copies to cooperate.
As for how much I’m willing to work for each copy, that’s a good question. A year of pickaxe trench-digging seems to be way too cheap and easy for a fully functioning copy. On the other hand, if I want 11 copies, that’s 11 years of pickaxing. So, there’s a risk that I’d lose all my purpose in progress, and deteriorate mentally and physically. The quality of copies would also deteriorate due to the degradation of original me due to accumulating years of pick-axing.
Regarding the copy / copy interacton: currently I see little value in non-interacting copies locked in their worlds, other than scaling up my ability to safely explore the world and learn from ‘my own’ mistakes (which assumes that their worlds must diverge.) BTW, does your constraint of no copy-copy interaction mean that I myself can’t interact with the copies?
As for any longer-term implications, I can’t say anything deep—I haven’t put much thought into this.
(This idea first occurred to me about 7 years ago, way before I started to read OB / LW, or anything like that. I was overloaded with work and surrounded with uncooperative employees and co-founders lacking domain experience.)
Actually to get 11 yous (or indeed 16 yous) in your scenario would take only 4 years of pickaxing.
After year 1 there are two of you. Both keep pickaxing. After year 2 there are four of you. After year 3, 8 After year 4, 16
(this could be speeded up slightly if you could add together the work of different copies. With that addition you’d have 11 copies in just over 3 years)
Yes, but this assumes that the contract allows the copies to pickaxe. If it does, I think I’d take the deal.
If the contract arbitrarily denies my copies rights, then I’m not sure I want to risk it at all.
I mean, what if I’ve missed that it also says “your copies aren’t allowed to refuse any command given by Dr. Evil”?
Now if my copies simply CAN’T pickaxe, what with being non-physical, that’s fair enough. But the idea seemed to be that the copies had full worlds in which they lived; in which case within their world they are every bit physical.
A contract denying specifically the right to contribute man-hours towards my share of pickaxing and no other rights would be fine with me. I’d have to watch the wording though. As for missing anything when reading it, such a contract will get very, very serious examination by myself and the best lawyers I can get.
That would be an pretty big “original privilege” :-)
Generally, when I think about making copies, I assume that the status of being “original” would be washed away and I would find myself existing with some amount of certainty (say 50% to 100%) that I was the copy. They I try to think about how I’d feel about having been created by someone who has all my memories/skills/tendencies/defects but has a metaphysically arbitrary (though perhaps emotionally or legally endorsed) claim to being “more authentic” than me by virtue of some historical fact of “mere physical continuity”.
I would only expect a copy to cooperate with my visions for what my copy “should do” if I’m excited by the prospect of getting to do that—if I’m kinda hoping that after the copy process I wake up as the copy because the copy is going to have a really interesting life.
In practice, I would expect that what I’d really have to do is write up two “divergence plans” for each future version of me, that seem equally desirable, then copy, then re-negotiate with my copy over the details of the divergence plans (because I imagine the practicalities of two of us existing might reveal some false assumptions in the first draft of the plans), and finally we’d flip a coin to find out which plan each of us is assigned to.
I guess… If only one of us gets the “right of making more copies” I’d want the original contact to make “copyright” re-assignable after the copying event, so I could figure out whether “copyright” is more of a privilege or a burden, and what the appropriate compensation is for taking up the burden or losing the privilege.
ETA:: Perhaps our preferences would diverge during negotiation? That actually seems like something to hope for because then a simple cake cutting algorithm could probably be used to ensure the assignment to a divergence plan was actually a positive sum interaction :-)
Presumably, each copy of you would also want to be part of a copy group, so if the year of pickaxe trench-digging seems to be a good idea at the end of it, your copy will presumably be willing to also put in a year.
Now we get to the question of whether you can choose the time of when the copy is made. You’d probably want a copy from before the year of trenching.
If you have to make copies of your current moment, then one of you would experience two consecutive years of trenching.
The good news is that the number of you doubles each year, so each of you only has to do 4 or 5 years to get a group of 12.