[ExI] Repeated Experience (was Affecting Past Experience)

[Lee Corbin]

Russell writes about Stathis's bombing scenario:

> Stathis writes
> 
> > My original experiment could conceivably be modelled without the need 
> > for godlike powers. Suppose I am informed that I am living in a
> > computer simulation of a special kind. My whole life from birth to
> > death has been determined, and is being run in real time in day long 
> > sections simultaneously on geographically separated computers, one
> > computer for each day of my life, so that the whole thing is over and
> > done with in a single day in the real world. I am also aware that 
> > these computers are the focus of a bombing campaign by forces who
> > believe sentient software is blasphemous.
> 
> Interesting, but it doesn't quite work as stated.
> 
> Initial state for day T + 1 = final state for day T. Therefore, the whole thing
> must have been run sequentially first, to create the series of initial states. 

Yes, I wondered if this was going to come up.  In my view this is not
fatal to Stathis's thought experiment because I think that "Repeated
Experience" should be valued as depositing equal benefit as original
experience.  (In fact, this was the point of my very first post to Extropians
in January of 1996, entitled "Repeated Experience".)

Most people beielive that repeated experience should be completely
identified with the original experience, but I consider the arguments
against this to be strong. For one thing, what if the experience is only
infinitesimally different? Sure, then it can be counted as infinitesimally
more valuable (and so on). But it seems awkward.

Then there is the argument from measure: on the theory (often used in
MWI) that your "measure"---or the sum of your observer moments
throughout the multiverse---is desired to be very large and is not
desired to be very small, then it follows that you might be apprehensive
concerning the following experiment:

    You know (because the computer OS has told you so) that
    your life actually consists of one-and-a-half runs. That is, the
    original execution of your life was stored, and is/was/will-be
    being replayed up to the half way point.  The OS now gleefully
    informs you that you are arriving at the one-half point in your
    life.

    Should you be at all concerned?  After all, clearly the OS told/
    is-telling both you and the next run of you (or you and the past
    run).  There is the nagging idea that *this* may be the 2nd run,
    and you're about to terminate forever (e.g. this will be the last
    runtime you ever get).  

   Now actually, the pointer (*this) in my opinion must refer equally
   to this point in both runs. But to me, I am faced with the prospect
   of  my runtime suddenly getting cut in half.  This is exactly how the
   MWI devotee feels regarding a sudden fifty-fifty chance of 
   imminent death:   in half the universes he's okay, and in the other
   half he dies immediately.  For me, I have a sort of fancy
   "Many Worlds Normalization Principle" which asserts that with
   very few exceptions, one ought to regard our feelings the same
   whether or not Many Worlds is true.  In particular, having a 50/50
   chance of death---which ordinarily of course makes people worry
   greatly---should be regarded as a 50% reduction in measure over
   a sheath of worlds.

> Now on day T you are given this news. But for the simulation to be
> valid, for final state T to be initial state T + 1, you must have been
> given this news in the original setup, back when the sequential run
> was being done and the terrorist group hadn't yet forsaken political
> methods for violence. 

Right.

> But that means when you were first given this news, it was false.
> So... is there even a fact of the matter as to whether it's true or
> false "for you"?

I think that this is the issue of Repeated Experience, and so I've
renamed the thread.

> The general conclusion I draw from this is that doing funky things
> with time/metatime isn't necessarily invalid, but it has a lot of
> subtle pitfalls that need to be looked out for. 

Oh, that's for sure!

Lee