and the rest of us can eat veal and foie gras guilt-free.
I don’t think this works.
Obama can use the same argument to decide that, since if he could have been any person, it would be vanishingly likely that he’d be the president of the most powerful nation on earth. Thus, clearly, the rest of us (he would conclude) have no conscious experience, and he had better go ahead and be an egoist, and run the country in whatever way gives him the most personal gain.
I don’t want Obama to do this, so I think I had better not do it either.
Obama can use the same argument to decide that, since if he could have been any person, it would be vanishingly likely that he’d be the president of the most powerful nation on earth. Thus, clearly, the rest of us (he would conclude) have no conscious experience, and he had better go ahead and be an egoist, and run the country in whatever way gives him the most personal gain.
Same argument as here, I don’t think 33 bits is enough to support the complexity penalty of the prior.
This is kind of scary though, if I imagine the emperor of a multi-galactic civilization, eventually the population is large enough. It seems unlikely though, even discounting speed of light issues, that a civilization of that size would be united under one single most powerful person.
The argument still shouldn’t work though. Every one of those bits of evidence that you’re the only guy around is counterbalanced by a doubling of the negative consequences if you’re wrong.
So yes, maybe Obama should assume he’s probably the only guy on earth, but his actions matter so massively much more in the tiny branch where he’s really the most powerful man in a world of billions of thinking living people, that he should still be working to optimize for it.
I don’t think this works.
Obama can use the same argument to decide that, since if he could have been any person, it would be vanishingly likely that he’d be the president of the most powerful nation on earth. Thus, clearly, the rest of us (he would conclude) have no conscious experience, and he had better go ahead and be an egoist, and run the country in whatever way gives him the most personal gain.
I don’t want Obama to do this, so I think I had better not do it either.
Same argument as here, I don’t think 33 bits is enough to support the complexity penalty of the prior.
This is kind of scary though, if I imagine the emperor of a multi-galactic civilization, eventually the population is large enough. It seems unlikely though, even discounting speed of light issues, that a civilization of that size would be united under one single most powerful person.
The argument still shouldn’t work though. Every one of those bits of evidence that you’re the only guy around is counterbalanced by a doubling of the negative consequences if you’re wrong.
So yes, maybe Obama should assume he’s probably the only guy on earth, but his actions matter so massively much more in the tiny branch where he’s really the most powerful man in a world of billions of thinking living people, that he should still be working to optimize for it.