X-Message-Number: 14983
Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2000 08:53:20 -0800
From: Lee Corbin <>
Subject: Duplicates and Many Worlds

Mike Perry writes

>The way the conditions are set up, I feel that the destruction
>of one of the copies is not equivalent to the destruction of
>none, subjectively speaking, even though I do not believe in
>a mystical soul. If we imagine that we start with 1 million
>(or 10^1000 say) copies and destroy all but one, it seems all
>the more so. At some point it's almost certain "you're gonna
>die," though an epsilon of chance remains you won't.

This isn't so.  In principle this could be happening to you
every night at 4pm: a million are made, and only one is allowed
to wake up.  You should not be worried to find that this was
occuring.  Now if this has gone on for years, and one moment
you realize that "you" are one of the 10^1000, why should you
start worrying?  What is so incredibly different about the M.P.
who will wake up tomorrow?  You should realize that it's really
you!  Or maybe it doesn't have YOUR self-circuit??

In the exact same manner, you should relax if a drug you've
taken is going to erase the last hour's memory.  And study the
following formalism:  say you are uploaded, and the memory
erasure is merely your replacement by a checkpoint made an
hour ago.  I'm sure that you find this somewhat annoying, but
not a threat to your existence.  Well, the person in your 
10^1000 experiment should realize that he's in exactly the
same situation.  The one of him that survives is PHYSICALLY
IDENTICAL to what he might turn out to be if his last hour's
memory is erased and then he goes forward with life as usual.
One could easily formalize this into an equation.

>But if you think that "your" survival is guaranteed so long
>as some double of yours somewhere survives, you shouldn't be
>worried at all if you believe in the many-worlds possiblity.

I do believe in MWI, and I do believe that I will survive in
other worlds, and that everyone who could possibly live is
alive somewhere.  Big deal.  I have already said that I really,
really, really regret when any one of me doesn't get run time,
or is killed.  So this argument does not apply to us.

As for the "suicide lottery", you can see why anyone who values
the life of his duplicates about as much as he values his "own"
life, would think the suicide lottery a very bad idea.


Lee Corbin

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