From: Daniel Yokomizo (daniel.yokomizo@gmail.com)
Date: Mon Oct 27 2008 - 07:30:32 MDT
On Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 8:47 PM, William Pearson <wil.pearson@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
By this you mean that there's no possible indeterminism in the
simulation. This is quite difficult (I don't even think this is
feasible) to achieve, because you need to forbid any IO, no
concurrency (all the simulator code must be single-threaded), assume
perfect hardware (no possible failures), use a deterministic seed for
the PRNG, find a PRNG that is random enough, etc..
If we are assuming many worlds, there's no way these assumptions can
be held. For example, the choice of seed is fundamental, but different
worlds will use different choices of PRNG. Even if all the other
assumptions hold this alone will cause many simulated worlds to exist.
Also many world imply that the choice of one world going to upload is
irrelevant, in other branches you won't upload, all is accounted for
in the many worlds, there's no loss of branches.
> 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
Best regards,
Daniel Yokomizo
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