No matter what the universe is, all you need for casual decision theory is that you live in a universe in which your actions have consequences, and you prefer some of the possible consequences over others. (you can adjust and alter this sentence for your preferred decision theory)
What if that doesn’t happen? What if you didn’t prefer any consequence over any other, and you were quite certain no action you took would make any difference to anything that mattered?
Well, it’s not a trick question … you’ll just act in any arbitrary way. It won’t matter. All actions would be equally rational.
The original Bob would not want to be this Bob.
That implies that the original Bob values ignorance/working towards goals/etc in addition to riding on dinosaurs in the past. Bob only needs one coherent value to have a reason to take certain actions.
The statement “The original Bob would not want to be this Bob.” doesn’t follow from the premise “Bob’s terminal value is not only utterly impossible but meaningless”. If that was really the only thing Bob valued, then the original Bob would be utterly neutral to becoming the enlightened Bob, since what happens to Bob and what Bob learns doesn’t matter. All possible futures are equally preferred, since none of them are closer to bringing Bob travelling to the past and riding a dinosaur.
No matter what the universe is, all you need for casual decision theory is that you live in a universe in which your actions have consequences, and you prefer some of the possible consequences over others. (you can adjust and alter this sentence for your preferred decision theory)
What if that doesn’t happen? What if you didn’t prefer any consequence over any other, and you were quite certain no action you took would make any difference to anything that mattered?
Well, it’s not a trick question … you’ll just act in any arbitrary way. It won’t matter. All actions would be equally rational.
That implies that the original Bob values ignorance/working towards goals/etc in addition to riding on dinosaurs in the past. Bob only needs one coherent value to have a reason to take certain actions.
The statement “The original Bob would not want to be this Bob.” doesn’t follow from the premise “Bob’s terminal value is not only utterly impossible but meaningless”. If that was really the only thing Bob valued, then the original Bob would be utterly neutral to becoming the enlightened Bob, since what happens to Bob and what Bob learns doesn’t matter. All possible futures are equally preferred, since none of them are closer to bringing Bob travelling to the past and riding a dinosaur.