From: William Pearson (wil.pearson@gmail.com)
Date: Sun Oct 26 2008 - 16:47:31 MDT
Let us say you believe in many worlds and you had been offered the
chance to upload into a deterministic simulation to live forever, any
quantum randomness would be generated by PRNG. It would be so good,
you wouldn't know you had been uploaded. Assuming you value the lives
of people you will never encounter, should you upload?
I'll give an argument for why you shouldn't.
More people will live if you upload. Your eyes are single photon
detectors, so sooner or later you will get split into different people
that follow different lives. You will have sex at different times, and
different children will be conceived, due to different sperm
fertilising eggs.
In the the deterministic sim, you would be in a single world line
(albeit it much thicker). So should you have a child it would only be
one child. Of course there is the miniscule possibility of arbitrary
quantum changes, leading to any possible world, if mangled worlds is
right they won't exist for long.
So in some senses you are condemning your many possible future
children to non-existance if you upload.
Thoughts? It seems to me to be mixing up the first person view and the
laplacian demon view, which I think is a mistake. But other people
might find it interesting.
Will Pearson
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