RE: another puzzle

From: Jesse Mazer <lasermazer.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2005 15:10:02 -0400

Lee Corbin wrote:

>If I, on the other hand, knew that this wonderful room was going to
>be available to me on a specific date, I would collect all my favorite
>movies, my best books, some certain chemicals that it is best not to
>describe in detail, and would look forward to the most wonderful
>afternoon of my life. I would enthusiastically pay a good fraction
>of my net worth for this opportunity.
>
>Why? Why would I do it? Because logic grabs me by the throat and
>*forces* me to :-)

What is the logic here exactly, though? From a third person point of view,
why is it objectively "better" to have a lot of copies of you having
identical good experiences than it is to have only a single copy have the
same good experience? After all, if they lied to you and never made any
copies at all, no version of you would ever know the difference.

Also, wouldn't the same logic tell you that if we lived in a utopian society
where pretty much everyone was happy, it would be immoral to use birth
control because we want to make the number of people having happy
experiences as high as possible? That doesn't seem like a position that
anyone who rejects first-person thinking would automatically accept.

Jesse
Received on Sun Jun 26 2005 - 15:22:27 PDT