Re: duplicates are the "same"

From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Tue Jun 12 2001 - 01:53:16 MDT


John Clark wrote:
>
> 3) I know nothing about the duplicate world, a gun is at both our heads and
> we both are convinced we're going to die. One gun goes off, making a hell
> of a mess, but the other gun, for inexplicable reasons misfires. In this
> case NOBODY died and except for undergoing a terrifying experience I am
> completely unharmed. The real beauty part is that I don't even have to
> clean up the mess.

Morbid pedantry (now there's a beautiful combination): What if there's a
subjective experience associated with having most, but not all, of your
brains blown out? Or are we assuming that the destruction of, i.e., the
reticular activating system, causes instant loss of consciousness in the
frontal lobes?

-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence



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