From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Wed Jun 12 2002 - 20:23:58 MDT
Wei Dai writes
> The final conclusion I came to was that it's a matter of subjective
> preferences whether re-running a life is a no-op. The argument is pretty
> simple. Ask yourself, is the billionth re-run worth as much as the first
> re-run (the second run)? If not, then why should the second run be worth
> the same as the first run, or be worth anything at all?
>
> To make the first question more concrete, consider the following thought
> experiment. Suppose someone offers to re-run your life up to now for a
> fee, and the most you're willing to pay is a million dollars. Now suppose
> you already had a coupon worth a billion re-runs. Would you still pay a
> million dollars to to do one more re-run?
Well, that's pretty amazing. I never thought of an experiment
that would seem to indicate that a logarithmic fall off in value
would attend run time itself (at least repeated run time). Right
now I agree: I wouldn't pay the million for that.
To be sure, we are in the realm where logic and consistency must
dictate to other intuitive preferences, and so I'll have to
continue to re-think this. It may happen that one really does
have no better use for the million dollars after all.
Your argument may be too powerful. It may persuade an entity
who has been alive a billion years on a modest income to sign
up for being rich for a few years and then die. (Or variations
thereof.)
> If you agree that it's a matter of subjective preferences,
I definitely don't agree that repeated experience is a no-op.
That seems inconsistent with too many of our shared values.
(For example, the assignation of benefit to programs that
get to run---e.g. the negative benefit to a little girl that
gets re-tortured---, the inadvisability of anesthetics which
only prevent memory formation (in other words, the preference
for actual experience over memory implantation), and the
linear (or perhaps logarithmic!) value of duplicate persons
over all space and time.)
Thanks for a most instructive thought experiment.
Lee
P.S. This is only my 7th post for the day, it turns out.
I also wish to post an idea suggested to me by a friend
about when one should change one's mind when presented
with what appears to be an air-tight argument. To see
my post on that, please page down a few times:
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