From: Matt Mahoney (matmahoney@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Mar 03 2009 - 08:28:43 MST
(It seems there is a time lag in our messages in both directions.)
--- On Tue, 3/3/09, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp@gmail.com> wrote:
> Your objection that it isn't really what's going on and we should just
> state the facts of the matter is like arguing that I shouldn't care
> what happens to me tomorrow because that will just be some guy who
> shares my memories and thinks he's me. Literally, this is true: there
> is no objective sense in which I can claim to be the "same person" as
> my tomorrow self, it's just that evolution has programmed me to think
> that way. Nevertheless, the programming is important to me, and I
> neither wish to overcome it nor am I able to overcome it, despite
> being aware of it. So when I encounter these duplication thought
> experiments my question is, How will this situation best fit in with
> my (delusional, atavistic, insurmountable) belief that I am one and
> only one person travelling through time in the forward direction?
Then I guess we are mostly in agreement after all.
The question "how should we compute the probability of being tortured?" is philosophical and irrelevant. The question "how will we compute the probability of being tortured?" does have an experimentally testable answer.
-- Matt Mahoney, matmahoney@yahoo.com
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