Imagine sitting outside the universe, and being given an exact description of everything that happened within the universe. From this perspective you can see who signed what.
You can also see whether your thoughts are happening in biology or silicon or whatever.
My point isn’t “you can’t tell whether or not your in a simulation so there is no difference”, my point is that there is no sharp cut off point between simulation and not simulation. We have a “know it when you see it” definition with ambiguous edge cases. Decision theory can’t have different rules for dealing with dogs and not dogs because some things are on the ambiguous edge of dogginess. Likewise decision theory can’t have different rules for you, copies of you and simulations of you as there is no sharp cut off. If you want to propose a continuous “simulatedness” parameter, and explain where that gets added to decision theory, go ahead. (Or propose some sharp cutoff)
Some people want to act as though a simulation of you is automatically you and my argument is that it is bad practise to assume this. I’m much more open to the idea that some simulations might be you in some sense than the claim that all are. This seems compatible with a fuzzy cut-off.
Imagine sitting outside the universe, and being given an exact description of everything that happened within the universe. From this perspective you can see who signed what.
You can also see whether your thoughts are happening in biology or silicon or whatever.
My point isn’t “you can’t tell whether or not your in a simulation so there is no difference”, my point is that there is no sharp cut off point between simulation and not simulation. We have a “know it when you see it” definition with ambiguous edge cases. Decision theory can’t have different rules for dealing with dogs and not dogs because some things are on the ambiguous edge of dogginess. Likewise decision theory can’t have different rules for you, copies of you and simulations of you as there is no sharp cut off. If you want to propose a continuous “simulatedness” parameter, and explain where that gets added to decision theory, go ahead. (Or propose some sharp cutoff)
Some people want to act as though a simulation of you is automatically you and my argument is that it is bad practise to assume this. I’m much more open to the idea that some simulations might be you in some sense than the claim that all are. This seems compatible with a fuzzy cut-off.