From: hal@finney.org
Date: Wed Nov 20 2002 - 16:06:30 MST
From: "Hal Finney" <hal@finney.org>
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I think the MWI gives a false intuition in this case. I agree with
GTS that if you use the MWI for the splitting, your chances of
surviving are 0.001. This is equivalent to throwing say 10 quantum
coins, and you only stay alive if all 10 are heads. From the MWI
perspective this splits you into 1024 copies, only one of which
survives. But prosaically we would say that you had a 1/1024 chance
of survival in this case.
However, things are different if you create actual duplicates rather
than do MWI splits. Say I have a conscious program running on a
computer. Then I suspend the program, make 999 copies of it, and
start them all up. I let them evolve for a few minutes to be
slightly different, then permanently shut down 999 of them.
In this case I think the program can expect that it will survive
that experience. The fact that 999 other copies existed for a
while does not change the fact that we can identify a stream of
consciousness from the beginning to the end.
The same thing would apply to people as for programs, but I prefer
to use programs as an example because it is easier to see how hard
it is to define the identity of a particular program when can be
stopped and resumed in complicated ways.
Here's a question for GTS. Suppose tonight I somehow made 999
copies of you, unbeknownst to you. I let them run for a day and
then killed them all. Would you say that this gives you only a
.001 chance of surviving, even though you never knew it had happened?
Or would it be different because in this case there is an "original"
which can be identified and is different from the copies?
Hal Finney
---- This message was posted by Hal Finney to the Extropians 2002 board on ExI BBS. <http://www.extropy.org/bbs/index.php?board=61;action=display;threadid=53727>
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