Re: Is a Person One or Many?

From: Matt Mahoney (matmahoney@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Mar 18 2008 - 17:14:39 MDT


--- Jeff L Jones <jeff@spoonless.net> wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 12:50 PM, Vladimir Nesov <robotact@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Jeff,
> >
> > You are complicating things by introducing this competition between
> > bodies of copies. The situation you describe can be modeled perfectly
> > well without introducing a special
> > probability-compensated-for-division-of-property.
>
> Vladimir,
>
> I don't know what you mean by "bodies of copies". I agree that you
> can analyze the situation without thinking about bets or property, and
> that this just makes it more complicated. The reason I wrote it all
> out in detail, however, is because I think that is what is leading you
> to think that "there is a 50% chance that the coin will come up heads"
> independent of who observes it. You're thinking of what a non-copied
> observer would see, and failing to consider what the copied observers
> see... which is the whole point of the question.

This is not a complication. It agrees perfectly with the other derivations.
The most rational bet from your perspective is to bet on heads with 100 to 1
odds. If the coin is heads, 100 copies of you receive $1 each. If it is
tails, you pay $100. The other bettor who is not copied plays 1 to 1 odds.

-- Matt Mahoney, matmahoney@yahoo.com



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