1) Yes, perfection is terribly unrealistic, but I think it gets too complicated to be interesting if it’s done any other way. It’s like a limit in mathematics—in fact, it should be the limit of relating to any prediction process as that process approaches perfection, or else you have a nasty discontinuity in your decision process, because all perfect processes can just be defined as “it’s perfect.”
2) Okay.
3) Statistical correlation, but not causal, so my definition would still tell them apart. In short, if you could throw me into the sun and then simulate me to atom-scale perfection, I would not want you to. This is because continuity is important to my sense of self.
4) Because any solution to the problem of consciousness and relationship between how much like you it is and how much you identify with it is going to be arbitrary. And so the picture in my head is is that the function of how much you would be willing to pay becomes multivalued as Omega becomes imperfect. And my brain sees a multivalued function and returns “not actually a function. Do not use.”
1) OK taking a limit is an idea I hadn’t thought of. It might even defeat my argument that your answer depends on how Omega achieves this. On the other hand:
a) I am not sure what the rest of my beliefs would look like anymore if I saw enough evidence to convince me that Omega was right all the time with probability 1-1/3^^^3 .
b) I doubt that the above is even possible, since given my argument you shouldn’t be able to convince me that the probability is less than say 10^-10 that I am a simulation talking to something that is not actually Omega.
3) I am not sure why you think that the simulation is not causally a copy of you. Either that or I am not sure what your distinction between statistical and causal is.
3+4) I agree that one of the weaknesses of this theory is that it depends heavily, among other things, on a somewhat controversial theory of identity/ what it means to win. Though I don’t see why the amount that you identify with an imperfect copy of yourself should be arbitrary, or at very least if that’s the case why its a problem for the dependence of your actions on Omega’s degree of perfection to be arbitrary, but not a problem for your identification with imperfect copies of yourself to be.
1) Yes, perfection is terribly unrealistic, but I think it gets too complicated to be interesting if it’s done any other way. It’s like a limit in mathematics—in fact, it should be the limit of relating to any prediction process as that process approaches perfection, or else you have a nasty discontinuity in your decision process, because all perfect processes can just be defined as “it’s perfect.”
2) Okay.
3) Statistical correlation, but not causal, so my definition would still tell them apart. In short, if you could throw me into the sun and then simulate me to atom-scale perfection, I would not want you to. This is because continuity is important to my sense of self.
4) Because any solution to the problem of consciousness and relationship between how much like you it is and how much you identify with it is going to be arbitrary. And so the picture in my head is is that the function of how much you would be willing to pay becomes multivalued as Omega becomes imperfect. And my brain sees a multivalued function and returns “not actually a function. Do not use.”
1) OK taking a limit is an idea I hadn’t thought of. It might even defeat my argument that your answer depends on how Omega achieves this. On the other hand:
a) I am not sure what the rest of my beliefs would look like anymore if I saw enough evidence to convince me that Omega was right all the time with probability 1-1/3^^^3 .
b) I doubt that the above is even possible, since given my argument you shouldn’t be able to convince me that the probability is less than say 10^-10 that I am a simulation talking to something that is not actually Omega.
3) I am not sure why you think that the simulation is not causally a copy of you. Either that or I am not sure what your distinction between statistical and causal is.
3+4) I agree that one of the weaknesses of this theory is that it depends heavily, among other things, on a somewhat controversial theory of identity/ what it means to win. Though I don’t see why the amount that you identify with an imperfect copy of yourself should be arbitrary, or at very least if that’s the case why its a problem for the dependence of your actions on Omega’s degree of perfection to be arbitrary, but not a problem for your identification with imperfect copies of yourself to be.