[extropy-chat] More Measure is Better than Less

[Lee Corbin]

Jef writes

> On 6/1/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
> >
> > > so if the off switch were pressed, our threads of consciousness
> > > would necessarily continue forward anyway...
> >
> > But!  With reduced measure!  Suppose as does Tegmark that there
> > is an identical you 10^10^29 away from here.  Then if someone
> > here who does not exist 10^10^29 from here kills you, then your
> > measure has gone down. You ought to consider that to be
> > undesirable.
> >
> > (It is for that reason that I believe benefit to be totally additive:
> > the more copies of me running, the better for me.)
> 
> Help me understand what you meant by this.  I'm quite comfortable with
> the concept of varying measure, depending on how many copies of you
> are running, but it seems to be a difference that makes no
> measurable(!) difference from anyone's viewpoint.

Yes, the "difference" it makes is of a peculiar nature. It's almost
(but not quite true) that no one ever has any memory that is any
different because they were running in two places instead of one.

But say you don't exist 10^10^29 meters from here, nor anywhere
else relatively near, and you kill me. Then so far as *local*
physics is concerned, Lee died. 

Yes, it is sort of tautological. But here is how it is derived:

If you take for granted that for one to perish locally is not
(just as our laws and customs dictate) is not to be preferred
for one, then it must follow that for a copy of one to perish
anywhere reduces one's benefits. As a last resort, check with
the government accounting department: one receives fewer
benefits in any particular solar system if one dies.

>From a higher philosophical principle, I invoke something like
analytic continuity: what is true in the new, arcane areas that
we discuss should reduce to being true in the everyday sense
also. So just listen to your senses: your dear lover lies dead
in your arms; it's really no consolation to know that 10^10^29
away from here she's alive and well.

Lee