You are of course right that there’s no difference between reality-fluid and normal probabilities in a small world: it’s just how much you care about various branches relative to each other, regardless of whether all of them will exist or only some.
I claim that the negative utility due to stopping to exist is just not there, because you don’t actually stop to exist in a way you reflectively care about, when you have fewer instances. For normal things (e.g., how much do you care about paperclips), the expected utility is the same; but here, it’s the kind of terminal value that i expect for most people would be different; guaranteed continuation in 5% of instances is much better than 5% chance of continuing in all instances; in the first case, you don’t die!
I claim that the negative utility due to stopping to exist is just not there
But we are not talking about negative utility due to stopping to exist. We are talking about avoiding counterfactual negative utility by committing suicide, which still exists!
guaranteed continuation in 5% of instances is much better than 5% chance of continuing in all instances; in the first case, you don’t die!
I think this is an artifact of thinking of all of the copies having a shared utility (i.e. you) rather than separate utilities that add up (i.e. so many yous will suffer if you don’t commit suicide). If they have separate utilities, we should think of them as separate instances of yourself.
it’s the kind of terminal value that i expect for most people would be different; guaranteed continuation in 5% of instances is much better than 5% chance of continuing in all instances; in the first case, you don’t die!
And even in the case where we are assigning negative utility to death, most people are really considering counterfactual utility from being alive, and 95% of that (expected) counterfactual utility is lost whether 95% of the “instances of you” die or whether there is a 95% chance that “you” die.
Whats the difference between fewer instances and fewer copies, and why is that load bearing for the expected utility calculation?
You are of course right that there’s no difference between reality-fluid and normal probabilities in a small world: it’s just how much you care about various branches relative to each other, regardless of whether all of them will exist or only some.
I claim that the negative utility due to stopping to exist is just not there, because you don’t actually stop to exist in a way you reflectively care about, when you have fewer instances. For normal things (e.g., how much do you care about paperclips), the expected utility is the same; but here, it’s the kind of terminal value that i expect for most people would be different; guaranteed continuation in 5% of instances is much better than 5% chance of continuing in all instances; in the first case, you don’t die!
But we are not talking about negative utility due to stopping to exist. We are talking about avoiding counterfactual negative utility by committing suicide, which still exists!
I think this is an artifact of thinking of all of the copies having a shared utility (i.e. you) rather than separate utilities that add up (i.e. so many yous will suffer if you don’t commit suicide). If they have separate utilities, we should think of them as separate instances of yourself.
And even in the case where we are assigning negative utility to death, most people are really considering counterfactual utility from being alive, and 95% of that (expected) counterfactual utility is lost whether 95% of the “instances of you” die or whether there is a 95% chance that “you” die.