Tom McCabe wrote: The probability is effectively much greater than that, because of complexity compression. If you have 3^^^^3 people with dust specks, almost all of them will be identical copies of each other, greatly reducing abs(U(specks)). abs(U(torture)) would also get reduced, but by a much smaller factor, because the number is much smaller to begin with.
Is there something wrong with viewing this from the perspective of the affected individuals (unique or not)? For any individual instance of a person, the probability of directly experiencing the torture is (10(10100))/(3^^^3), regardless of how many identical copies of this person exist.
Mike wrote: I think a more apposite application of that translation might be:
If I knew I was going to live for 3^^^3+50*365 days, and I was faced with that choice every day …
I’m wondering how you would phrase the daily choice in this case, to get the properties you want. Perhaps like this:
1.) Add a period of (50*365)/3^^^3 days to the time period you will be tortured at the end of your life.
2.) Get a speck.
This isn’t quite the same as the original question, as it gives choices between the two extremes. And in practice, this could get rather annoying, as just having to answer the question would be similarly bad to getting a speck. Leaving that aside, however, I’d still take the (ridiculously short) torture every day.
The difference is that framing the question as a one-off individual choice obscures the fact that in the example proffered, the torture is a certainty.
I don’t think the math in my personal utility-estimation algorithm works out significantly differently depending on which of the cases is chosen.
Tom McCabe wrote:
The probability is effectively much greater than that, because of complexity compression. If you have 3^^^^3 people with dust specks, almost all of them will be identical copies of each other, greatly reducing abs(U(specks)). abs(U(torture)) would also get reduced, but by a much smaller factor, because the number is much smaller to begin with.
Is there something wrong with viewing this from the perspective of the affected individuals (unique or not)? For any individual instance of a person, the probability of directly experiencing the torture is (10(10100))/(3^^^3), regardless of how many identical copies of this person exist.
Mike wrote:
I think a more apposite application of that translation might be:
If I knew I was going to live for 3^^^3+50*365 days, and I was faced with that choice every day …
I’m wondering how you would phrase the daily choice in this case, to get the properties you want. Perhaps like this:
1.) Add a period of (50*365)/3^^^3 days to the time period you will be tortured at the end of your life.
2.) Get a speck.
This isn’t quite the same as the original question, as it gives choices between the two extremes. And in practice, this could get rather annoying, as just having to answer the question would be similarly bad to getting a speck. Leaving that aside, however, I’d still take the (ridiculously short) torture every day.
The difference is that framing the question as a one-off individual choice obscures the fact that in the example proffered, the torture is a certainty.
I don’t think the math in my personal utility-estimation algorithm works out significantly differently depending on which of the cases is chosen.