[ExI] any exact copy of you is you + universe is infinite = you are guaranteed immortality

[Jef Allbright]

On 6/16/07, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 16/06/07, Jef Allbright <jef at jefallbright.net> wrote:
>
> > Where's the paradox?  There is none, unless one holds to a belief in
> > an essential self.
>
> You are of course completely right, in an objective sense. However, I am
> burdened with a human craziness which makes me think that I am going to be
> one, and only one, person post-duplication. This idea is at least as firmly
> fixed in my mind as the desire not to die (another crazy idea: how can I die
> when there is no absolute "me" alive from moment to moment, and even if
> there were why should I be a slave to my evolutionary programming when I am
> insightful enough to see how I am being manipulated?). My question is about
> how wild-type human psychology leads one to view subjective probabilities in
> these experiments, not about the uncontested material facts.

You're abusing the term "subjective probabilities" here, perhaps
willfully.  Valid use of the term pertains to estimating your
subjective uncertainty about the actual state of some aspect of
reality. If your objective is truly "about how wild-type psychology
leads one..." then your focus should be on the psychology of
heuristics and biases, definitely NOT philosophy.

<snip>

> > I see no essential difference between this scenario and the previous
> > one above.   How can you possibly imagine that big numbers or small
> > durations could make a difference in principle?
> >
> > While this topic is about as stale as one can be, I am curious about
> > how it can continue to fascinate certain individuals.
> >
>
> It has fascinated me for many years, in part because different parties see
> an "obvious" answer and these answers are completely at odds with each
> other.

The difference between the camps is not between obvious right answers,
but about the relative importance assigned to max entropy modeling
versus defending the illusion of an essential self.


> My "obvious" answer is that we could already be living in a world
> where multiple copies are being made of us all the time, and we would still
> have developed exactly the same theory of and attitude towards probability
> theory as if there were only a single world.

You're right.  It **could** be true.

- Jef