Re: Is a Person One or Many?

From: John K Clark (johnkclark@fastmail.fm)
Date: Mon Mar 10 2008 - 10:16:40 MDT


On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 13:05:45 +1100, "Stathis Papaioannou"
<stathisp@gmail.com> said:

> Eliezer's example where you are duplicated 100-fold if
> a coin comes up heads and then re-merged a short time
> later: what is the subjective probability of heads?

50% of course, the number of exact copies of my brain in existence is
irrelevant, there is only one me. An odd situation certainly, but it’s
not paradoxical.

> Lee's example where you are duplicated and an hour
> later you (i.e. one of the copies) are offered painless
> death so that the other copy gets a large sum of money.

One copy is offered death and the other copy is offered a long and happy
life, one has a traumatic experience and the other does not, the 2
“exact” copies are no longer even approximately exact.

> 100 copies of you are made in London and one copy
> is made in Paris. The Paris copy is tortured while
> the London copies are not tortured.

So there is a 50% chance I will be tortured.

> 100 copies of you are made in London and one copy
> is made in Paris. After an hour, the 100 copies in
> London are tortured while the copy in Paris is
> duplicated 100,000 times and none of these copies are tortured.

So there is a 50% chance I will be tortured.

 John K Clark

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  John K Clark
  johnkclark@fastmail.fm
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