1) You are Fred (of HPMOR’s Fred & George, who for this we’ll assume are perfect copies). Voldemort comes up to you and George and says he will kill one of you. If he kills George, you live and nothing else happens. If he kills you, George lives and gets a dollar. Would you choose to allow you!Fred to die? And not just as the sacrifice you know it’s reasonable to make in terms of total final utility but as the obvious correct choice from your perspective. (If the names are a problem, assume somebody makes a copy of you and immediately asks you this question.)
2) If all else is equal, would you rather have N*X copies than X copies for all positive values of X and all positive and greater than 1 values of N? (I don’t know why I worded that like that. Would you rather have more copies than less for all values of more and less?)
3) You go to make copies of yourself for the first time. You have $100, with which you can pay for either 1 copy or 100 copies (with a small caveat). If you choose 100 copies, each copy’s life is 10% less good, and the life of original/biological!you will be 20% less good (the copy maker is a magical wizard that can do things like this and likes to make people think). Do you choose the 100 copies? And do you think that it is obviously better and one would be stupid to choose otherwise?
Re: #1… there are all kinds of emotional considerations here, of course; I really don’t know what I would do, much as I don’t know what I would do given a similar deal involving my real-life brother or husband. But if I leave all of that aside, and I also ignore total expected utility calculations, then I prefer to continue living and let my copy die.
Re: #2… within some range of Ns where there aren’t significant knock-on effects unrelated to what I think you’re getting at (e.g., creating too much competition for the things I want, losing the benefits of cooperation among agents with different comparative advantages, etc.), I prefer that N+1 copies of me exist than N copies. More generally, I prefer the company of people similar to me, and I prefer that there be more agents trying to achieve the things I want more of in the world.
Re: #3… I’m not sure. My instinct is to make just one copy rather than accept the 20% penalty in quality of life, but it’s not an easy choice; I acknowledge that I ought to value the hundred copies more.
I’m not trying to back you into a corner, but it seems like your responses to #1 and #3 indicate that you value the original more than the others, which seems to imply that the copies would be less you. From your answer to #2, I came up with another question. Would you value uploading and copying just as much if somehow the copies were P-zombies? It seems like your answers to #1-3 would be the same in that case.
I don’t value the original over the others, but I do value me over not-me (even in situations where I can’t really justify that choice beyond pure provincialism).
A hypothetical copy of me created in the future is just as much me (hypothetically) as the actual future me is, but a hypothetical already-created copy of a past me is not me. The situation is perfectly symmetrical; if someone makes a copy of me and asks the copy the question in #1, I give the same answer as when they ask the original.
I have trouble answering the P-zombie question, since I consider P-zombies an incoherent idea. I mean, if I can’t tell the difference between P-zombies and genuine people, then I react to my copies just the same as if they were genuine people… how could I do anything else?
Ok, three more questions/scenarios.
1) You are Fred (of HPMOR’s Fred & George, who for this we’ll assume are perfect copies). Voldemort comes up to you and George and says he will kill one of you. If he kills George, you live and nothing else happens. If he kills you, George lives and gets a dollar. Would you choose to allow you!Fred to die? And not just as the sacrifice you know it’s reasonable to make in terms of total final utility but as the obvious correct choice from your perspective. (If the names are a problem, assume somebody makes a copy of you and immediately asks you this question.)
2) If all else is equal, would you rather have N*X copies than X copies for all positive values of X and all positive and greater than 1 values of N? (I don’t know why I worded that like that. Would you rather have more copies than less for all values of more and less?)
3) You go to make copies of yourself for the first time. You have $100, with which you can pay for either 1 copy or 100 copies (with a small caveat). If you choose 100 copies, each copy’s life is 10% less good, and the life of original/biological!you will be 20% less good (the copy maker is a magical wizard that can do things like this and likes to make people think). Do you choose the 100 copies? And do you think that it is obviously better and one would be stupid to choose otherwise?
Thanks.
Re: #1… there are all kinds of emotional considerations here, of course; I really don’t know what I would do, much as I don’t know what I would do given a similar deal involving my real-life brother or husband. But if I leave all of that aside, and I also ignore total expected utility calculations, then I prefer to continue living and let my copy die.
Re: #2… within some range of Ns where there aren’t significant knock-on effects unrelated to what I think you’re getting at (e.g., creating too much competition for the things I want, losing the benefits of cooperation among agents with different comparative advantages, etc.), I prefer that N+1 copies of me exist than N copies. More generally, I prefer the company of people similar to me, and I prefer that there be more agents trying to achieve the things I want more of in the world.
Re: #3… I’m not sure. My instinct is to make just one copy rather than accept the 20% penalty in quality of life, but it’s not an easy choice; I acknowledge that I ought to value the hundred copies more.
I’m not trying to back you into a corner, but it seems like your responses to #1 and #3 indicate that you value the original more than the others, which seems to imply that the copies would be less you. From your answer to #2, I came up with another question. Would you value uploading and copying just as much if somehow the copies were P-zombies? It seems like your answers to #1-3 would be the same in that case.
Thanks for being so accommodating, really.
I don’t value the original over the others, but I do value me over not-me (even in situations where I can’t really justify that choice beyond pure provincialism).
A hypothetical copy of me created in the future is just as much me (hypothetically) as the actual future me is, but a hypothetical already-created copy of a past me is not me. The situation is perfectly symmetrical; if someone makes a copy of me and asks the copy the question in #1, I give the same answer as when they ask the original.
I have trouble answering the P-zombie question, since I consider P-zombies an incoherent idea. I mean, if I can’t tell the difference between P-zombies and genuine people, then I react to my copies just the same as if they were genuine people… how could I do anything else?