I’m thinking about how those models work together.
Like, if I win the lottery, I should think “Could I be confused? Hallucinating? Deceived? Just lucky?” Seems like, if I win the lottery vs. my clones, I should think the same things. The case that that’s what surprise is about is strong.
In the case of the regular lottery before the draw I do expect someone to win, but that future person will almost certainly not contain any of my memories. When I do win I can point back to my past self that bought the ticket and think “What were the chances he would win?” But in the case of the copies when I point back to myself and ask “What were the chance he would win?”, the answer is clearly “about 1”.
Along the lines of Will’s ‘Hallucinating? Deceived?’ stream of thought we can consider the case where your knowledge that you won the lottery comes from a test which has a 1% chance of false positives every time it is applied. Obviously you would strongly doubt that you were in fact the winner of the lottery even when the test tells you that you are. Hallucinating is far less likely than 1%, deception depends on the circumstance and details and it may be at least be worth a quick reality check to verify that you are not dreaming. This is the sense of ‘surprise’ that Will is considering equivalent to a standard lottery win.
This is not me disagreeing with your position—I upvoted each of your last few comments here. I totally agree with you that you should not be surprised that you win. Before the cloning you were totally expecting to win the lottery. It is only after the cloning and before being told whether ‘you’ won the lottery that you were not expecting the boon.
I don’t consider the whole subjective experience thing to be particularly confusing. It just requires careful expression of what ‘you’ is being discussed and precise description of the conditional probabilities being considered.
I’m thinking about how those models work together.
Like, if I win the lottery, I should think “Could I be confused? Hallucinating? Deceived? Just lucky?” Seems like, if I win the lottery vs. my clones, I should think the same things. The case that that’s what surprise is about is strong.
In the case of the regular lottery before the draw I do expect someone to win, but that future person will almost certainly not contain any of my memories. When I do win I can point back to my past self that bought the ticket and think “What were the chances he would win?” But in the case of the copies when I point back to myself and ask “What were the chance he would win?”, the answer is clearly “about 1”.
Along the lines of Will’s ‘Hallucinating? Deceived?’ stream of thought we can consider the case where your knowledge that you won the lottery comes from a test which has a 1% chance of false positives every time it is applied. Obviously you would strongly doubt that you were in fact the winner of the lottery even when the test tells you that you are. Hallucinating is far less likely than 1%, deception depends on the circumstance and details and it may be at least be worth a quick reality check to verify that you are not dreaming. This is the sense of ‘surprise’ that Will is considering equivalent to a standard lottery win.
This is not me disagreeing with your position—I upvoted each of your last few comments here. I totally agree with you that you should not be surprised that you win. Before the cloning you were totally expecting to win the lottery. It is only after the cloning and before being told whether ‘you’ won the lottery that you were not expecting the boon.
I don’t consider the whole subjective experience thing to be particularly confusing. It just requires careful expression of what ‘you’ is being discussed and precise description of the conditional probabilities being considered.