Frank is “irrelevant”—I was going to say he was unconscious, but then we might get into minutiae about whether a mind in a perpetual coma, from which you have no method of awakening him, really counts as alive. This isn’t a Prisoner’s Dilemma—it’s formulated to be as simple as possible, hence “Empty White Room.”
And I noted that in the post—that it’s possible all your secular values converge. You’d still expect certain things to have infinite value to you, though.
(Also, Dust Specks inspired this post, but surreal utilities don’t do much to solve it: the result of the choice depends entirely on how you assign tiers to dust specks v. torture.)
Frank is “irrelevant”—I was going to say he was unconscious, but then we might get into minutiae about whether a mind in a perpetual coma, from which you have no method of awakening him, really counts as alive. This isn’t a Prisoner’s Dilemma—it’s formulated to be as simple as possible, hence “Empty White Room.”
And I noted that in the post—that it’s possible all your secular values converge. You’d still expect certain things to have infinite value to you, though.
(Also, Dust Specks inspired this post, but surreal utilities don’t do much to solve it: the result of the choice depends entirely on how you assign tiers to dust specks v. torture.)