If I was presented with this choice ten years ago, I very well might have chosen (1), but I would have been aware that my life was fairly reliably getting more enjoyable as a function of time. (For me, being five was horrible, being ten sucked, being fifteen was frustrating, being twenty was actually pretty good, etc.)
Experiencing something twice doesn’t seem indistinguishable to me, which is the notion I’m getting from a lot of other people’s responses. I don’t remember eating ice cream a few months ago, but I’m pretty sure I did and I enjoyed it. I ate ice cream yesterday and it was enjoyable. The enjoyment of something is still relevant even if I don’t remember it; if I ate ice cream now, got mindwiped of the memory of that, and then had another cone I still think more than one ice cream’s worth of utility is being generated. Likewise, reliving my life over again still has meaning.
I do kinda wish I could start the replay around fourteen though. That’d skip a lot of the worst moments.
The experiment specifies that the circumstances are all but literally indistinguishable:
I’ll allow you to relive your life up to this moment exactly as it unfolded the first time—that is, all the exact same experiences, life decisions, outcomes, etc.
If the sequence of events is “exactly” the same, then from your perspective it cannot be distinguished. If it could, then some event must have happened differently in the past to make it such that you were aware things were different, which violates the tenets of God’s claim. In other words, the two timelines basically must be indistinguishable from your perspective.
You are correct. Rephrasing, as I was unclear before: my experiences will be indistinguishable to me, but from an outside perspective I think there’s a difference. In the moment I’m making the decision, I’m trying to take that outside view. I suppose I’m trying to answer what I think was the spirit of the question; I value me existing and having experiences. Getting to go through life again means I exist ‘longer’ (it’s unclear exactly how the time reversal works in this case, but for this to make any sense there has to be some kind of added amount of subjective experiences, even if they’re exact copies of ‘previous’ experiences) and I would rather prolong my existence than cease to exist.
Imperfect analogy: imagine telling a paperclip maximizer that you will copy every paperclip it’s made, but you will copy them somewhere else where the paperclip maximizer will never sense them. It wants more paperclips, so it likes this idea. In a similar way, I like me existing and having experiences.
If I was presented with this choice ten years ago, I very well might have chosen (1), but I would have been aware that my life was fairly reliably getting more enjoyable as a function of time. (For me, being five was horrible, being ten sucked, being fifteen was frustrating, being twenty was actually pretty good, etc.)
Experiencing something twice doesn’t seem indistinguishable to me, which is the notion I’m getting from a lot of other people’s responses. I don’t remember eating ice cream a few months ago, but I’m pretty sure I did and I enjoyed it. I ate ice cream yesterday and it was enjoyable. The enjoyment of something is still relevant even if I don’t remember it; if I ate ice cream now, got mindwiped of the memory of that, and then had another cone I still think more than one ice cream’s worth of utility is being generated. Likewise, reliving my life over again still has meaning.
I do kinda wish I could start the replay around fourteen though. That’d skip a lot of the worst moments.
The experiment specifies that the circumstances are all but literally indistinguishable:
If the sequence of events is “exactly” the same, then from your perspective it cannot be distinguished. If it could, then some event must have happened differently in the past to make it such that you were aware things were different, which violates the tenets of God’s claim. In other words, the two timelines basically must be indistinguishable from your perspective.
You are correct. Rephrasing, as I was unclear before: my experiences will be indistinguishable to me, but from an outside perspective I think there’s a difference. In the moment I’m making the decision, I’m trying to take that outside view. I suppose I’m trying to answer what I think was the spirit of the question; I value me existing and having experiences. Getting to go through life again means I exist ‘longer’ (it’s unclear exactly how the time reversal works in this case, but for this to make any sense there has to be some kind of added amount of subjective experiences, even if they’re exact copies of ‘previous’ experiences) and I would rather prolong my existence than cease to exist.
Imperfect analogy: imagine telling a paperclip maximizer that you will copy every paperclip it’s made, but you will copy them somewhere else where the paperclip maximizer will never sense them. It wants more paperclips, so it likes this idea. In a similar way, I like me existing and having experiences.