4 ms·

So let's assume that the universe is infinite in extent, and everything which can happen, does happen, infinite times. That means you are not the only "you" in

So let's assume that the universe is infinite in extent, and everything which can happen, does happen, infinite times. That means you are not the only "you" in the Universe. You may now commit suicide, safe in the knowledge that it doesn't matter, because there's no difference between the current you and the distant you. Unless you're now going to change tack and say it only counts if you're in each other's Light cone, and have seen each other, and understand the cloning machine's workings, and trust it was built correctly, and an endless amount of other procrastinating which proves that it does matter to you which one dies, and no matter what words you type, your behavior will show that you recognize a stark difference between "you" and "someone else". Clearly a condition "I know they exist" doesn't change whether you two are the same person or not, so that can't be an important part of it.

AgentME 7y ago
>You may now commit suicide, safe in the knowledge that it doesn't matter, because there's no difference between the current you and the distant you. If you decide to commit suicide, then any identical copies of yourself will also have the same thought process and decide to commit suicide too, so you'll have killed all identical copies of yourself. That's very different than deciding to do something (like use a scan-clone-destroy teleporter) that will create a copy of yourself and then destroy one copy of yourself.
- jodrellblank 7y ago
  Then make it Russian Roulette; most of you will survive, and any one of you is enough to count as all of you. Now is it any different to stepping into the teleporter?
  - AgentME 7y ago
    Playing russian roulette would leave many worlds without an instance of me, in a way that the teleporter wouldn't. I care about my responsibilities and loved ones left without me in those worlds. If there were truly infinite worlds and infinite of each variation, and you could somehow play russian roulette instead with an entire world, so that each one has a risk of just entirely blinking out of existence ... it feels superficially wrong, but I find it hard to argue against. I'd worry that there's a risk of if it was done infinitely, then by some logic the infinite sum could eventually lead to all worlds not existing eventually, but if that was definitely known not to be a risk then I would find it hard to care about whether the world played russian roulette or not.

AgentME 7y ago

>You may now commit suicide, safe in the knowledge that it doesn't matter, because there's no difference between the current you and the distant you. If you decide to commit suicide, then any identical copies of yourself will also have the same thought process and decide to commit suicide too, so you'll have killed all identical copies of yourself. That's very different than deciding to do something (like use a scan-clone-destroy teleporter) that will create a copy of yourself and then destroy one copy of yourself.

jodrellblank 7y ago
Then make it Russian Roulette; most of you will survive, and any one of you is enough to count as all of you. Now is it any different to stepping into the teleporter?
- AgentME 7y ago
  Playing russian roulette would leave many worlds without an instance of me, in a way that the teleporter wouldn't. I care about my responsibilities and loved ones left without me in those worlds. If there were truly infinite worlds and infinite of each variation, and you could somehow play russian roulette instead with an entire world, so that each one has a risk of just entirely blinking out of existence ... it feels superficially wrong, but I find it hard to argue against. I'd worry that there's a risk of if it was done infinitely, then by some logic the infinite sum could eventually lead to all worlds not existing eventually, but if that was definitely known not to be a risk then I would find it hard to care about whether the world played russian roulette or not.