Lee Corbin wrote:
> Stathis asks
>
>
>>Yet another thought experiment for your consideration. You are
>>offered the option of 10 years of normal life, or being cloned
>>20 times with each clone living one year. I would choose the
>>10 years; if I chose the 20 clones, each one of those clones
>>would be kicking themselves for their stupidity. I take it you
>>would choose the 20 clones, and each of your clones would be
>>smug in the knowledge that they have doubled their effective
>>runtime?
>
>
> That's right. Math grabs me by the throat and says "the bridge
> will hold" oops, that's another time you have to believe the
> math, sorry, it says "you will live twice as long and derive
> twice the benefit in 20 copies as 10, just as if a single one
> were to live 20 years instead of 10, he would acquire twice the
> benefit."
>
> (For other readers, Stathis and I of course are controlling for
> irrelevant aspects of this, such as nonlinearities that might follow,
> for example, from considering that twenty successive years may be
> a lot more meaningful, or something, than just ten years.)
>
> Yes, as each clone was about to die, they'd feel bad of course,
> since the death of any human being is a sort of lie, an unfulfilled
> promise. But they'd feel better than the 10 year version when his
> time is nearly up. He'd say "I should have gone with the 20 duplicates
> and had a fuller, richer life."
I think he might say, "I've had such a short life, maybe I should have chosen the 10yrs - but then
I'd have high probability of not having existed."
Given that just after the cloning, the clones would quickly diverge, becoming different people; it
seems you could be happy contemplating the fuller, richer life of all the people you know just as
much as if they were clones of yourself.
Brent Meeker
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Received on Tue Jul 04 2006 - 18:40:43 PDT