My intuitions give a rather interesting answer to this: It depends strongly on the details of the mind in question. For the vast majority of possible minds I would push the button, but the human dot an a fair sized chunk of mind design space around it I’d not push the button for. It also seems to depend on seemingly unrelated things, for example I’d push it for a human if an only if it was similar enough to a human existing elsewhere whose existence was not affected by the copying AND would approve of pushing the button.
For the vast majority of possible minds I would push the button, but the human dot an a fair sized chunk of mind design space around it I’d not push the button for.
How come? This is an immensely suggestive statement, but I’m not sure where you’re going with it.
As I said, intuition. I can make guesses about the causes of those intuitions, and probably have a better chance at getting the right answer than an outside observer due to having the black box in question inside my head for preforming experiments on, but I don’t have any direct introspective access. If you’re asking for arguments that someone else should act this way as well, that’s a very different question.
My intuitions give a rather interesting answer to this: It depends strongly on the details of the mind in question. For the vast majority of possible minds I would push the button, but the human dot an a fair sized chunk of mind design space around it I’d not push the button for. It also seems to depend on seemingly unrelated things, for example I’d push it for a human if an only if it was similar enough to a human existing elsewhere whose existence was not affected by the copying AND would approve of pushing the button.
How come? This is an immensely suggestive statement, but I’m not sure where you’re going with it.
As I said, intuition. I can make guesses about the causes of those intuitions, and probably have a better chance at getting the right answer than an outside observer due to having the black box in question inside my head for preforming experiments on, but I don’t have any direct introspective access. If you’re asking for arguments that someone else should act this way as well, that’s a very different question.