Yes, pre-committing is a good idea to reduce the incentive for people to clone you. However, this post was about the strategy if you haven’t pre-committed.
Making a trillion and one copies only reduces the odds of escaping torture to less than 50%. So to really defend against this strategy, you need to be able to create much more than your opponents.
No, my point was that making a trillion and one copies does _NOT_ increase the odds of escaping torture. It makes the odds that a Dr. Evil will be tortured a complete certainty. Dr. Evil himself made copies that will be tortured if and only if other copies are not tortured. This is not a winning tactic if avoiding torture is the goal over all else.
The only way for him to fully prevent torture is to destroy the capability of others to torture him. He _can_ reduce the probability by cooperating with the extortionists, but who’s to say they won’t torture him anyway for his name (he is Evil, after all), or for some future plan they don’t like. The only way for him to carry out his plans is to decide that torture is worth suffering for them.
We’re assuming here that Dr Evil doesn’t care about his clones. The only reason why his clones being tortured is a threat is because due to his lack of information, he doesn’t know his clone is about to be tortured or if he is the clone.
Some people might object and say that the clones are him. I’m very skeptical of those kinds of arguments, but beyond that we can get around this issue. The clones don’t actually have to be completely accurate clones of his mental state; just beings with a good-enough backstory and set of implanted memories so that the game isn’t given away. One of the clones could have a completely different set of childhood memories, for example, as long as any inconsistencies were smoothed over. Therefore, even if we say that perfect clones of a person are the person, these clones could be different enough to not count without ruining the thought experiment.
Now I’m confused. I’d expected when you described the scenario that it’s obvious that the “real” Dr. Evil cannot tell whether he’s the real one or a clone. So his clones _are_ definitely him. If he doesn’t care about clones, even if he knows that some version(s) of him are the clone, then he just presses the button, right?
Or are you saying that only the cloned versions of him care about the clones? I don’t think that’s coherent.
“If he doesn’t care about clones, even if he knows that some version(s) of him are the clone, then he just presses the button, right?”—No, because if it turns out that he is actually a clone, he will be tortured.
“Or are you saying that only the cloned versions of him care about the clones?”—Yes, Dr Evil only cares about Dr Evil, Dr Evil Clone #1 only cares about Dr Evil Clone #1, Dr Evil Clone #2 only cares about Dr Evil Clone #2 ect. Why isn’t that coherent?
“So his clones _are_ definitely him”—Why? The clones could have completely different backstories from the original Dr Evil, just so long that they (the clones themselves) can’t tell. That suffices to create the desired ambiguity.
Yes, pre-committing is a good idea to reduce the incentive for people to clone you. However, this post was about the strategy if you haven’t pre-committed.
Making a trillion and one copies only reduces the odds of escaping torture to less than 50%. So to really defend against this strategy, you need to be able to create much more than your opponents.
No, my point was that making a trillion and one copies does _NOT_ increase the odds of escaping torture. It makes the odds that a Dr. Evil will be tortured a complete certainty. Dr. Evil himself made copies that will be tortured if and only if other copies are not tortured. This is not a winning tactic if avoiding torture is the goal over all else.
The only way for him to fully prevent torture is to destroy the capability of others to torture him. He _can_ reduce the probability by cooperating with the extortionists, but who’s to say they won’t torture him anyway for his name (he is Evil, after all), or for some future plan they don’t like. The only way for him to carry out his plans is to decide that torture is worth suffering for them.
We’re assuming here that Dr Evil doesn’t care about his clones. The only reason why his clones being tortured is a threat is because due to his lack of information, he doesn’t know his clone is about to be tortured or if he is the clone.
Some people might object and say that the clones are him. I’m very skeptical of those kinds of arguments, but beyond that we can get around this issue. The clones don’t actually have to be completely accurate clones of his mental state; just beings with a good-enough backstory and set of implanted memories so that the game isn’t given away. One of the clones could have a completely different set of childhood memories, for example, as long as any inconsistencies were smoothed over. Therefore, even if we say that perfect clones of a person are the person, these clones could be different enough to not count without ruining the thought experiment.
Now I’m confused. I’d expected when you described the scenario that it’s obvious that the “real” Dr. Evil cannot tell whether he’s the real one or a clone. So his clones _are_ definitely him. If he doesn’t care about clones, even if he knows that some version(s) of him are the clone, then he just presses the button, right?
Or are you saying that only the cloned versions of him care about the clones? I don’t think that’s coherent.
“If he doesn’t care about clones, even if he knows that some version(s) of him are the clone, then he just presses the button, right?”—No, because if it turns out that he is actually a clone, he will be tortured.
“Or are you saying that only the cloned versions of him care about the clones?”—Yes, Dr Evil only cares about Dr Evil, Dr Evil Clone #1 only cares about Dr Evil Clone #1, Dr Evil Clone #2 only cares about Dr Evil Clone #2 ect. Why isn’t that coherent?
“So his clones _are_ definitely him”—Why? The clones could have completely different backstories from the original Dr Evil, just so long that they (the clones themselves) can’t tell. That suffices to create the desired ambiguity.