What if exact copies don’t matter but future experiences still do?
I think an ethics resulting from the following two premises is worth exploring:
P1: The total moral value of subjectively indistinguishable observer-moments doesn’t scale with the number of copies, i.e. they sum to a constant value.
This is because subjectively indistinguishable observer-moments, in some sense, happen to the same “someone”. One could think of themselves as all their copies. N observer-moments that are subjectively indistinguishable aren’t felt N times by that same “someone”. Only felt “once”.
E.g. Even if there were multiple exact copies of me, of my current present experience, I might not really care personally because it doesn’t seem to change anything for me. “I” don’t notice anything.
We can say that multiple “tokens” of subjectively indistinguishable observer-moments belong to the same “type” of observer-moment.
P2: What matters, and can be changed, for each type of observer-moment is the distribution of its subjectively “future” experiences.
You can’t “un-exist” the type of observer-moment itself, but you can change what it continues into.
A higher fraction of “future” observer-moments experiencing suffering is dispreferable.
A higher fraction of “future” observer-moments experiencing happiness/tranquility is preferable, even if only instrumentally to minimize subjectively “future” suffering.
This is related to thinking about “anthropic immortality” / “quantum immortality” / “multiverse immortality” in which distributions of post-death observer-moments are of substantial concern.
Using these lenses, the moral situation of the world looks like:
Consider a graph with types of observer-moments as nodes, such that one node is one type.
Each type of observer-moment (each node) is associated with some value/disvalue attributed to its current experience.
Importantly, the value/disvalue of the current experience is not something we can change in order to help the observer-moment type. This is already fixed.
Each type of observer-moment (each node) is also associated with any number of subjectively indistinguishable token observer-moments belonging to that specific type.
The absolute number of token observer-moments appears to only matter instrumentally insofar as it affects the frequency of expectations of other types of observer-moments.
Edges represent subjective continuation. An edge from type A to type B exists if an observer-moment of type A can possibly expect to continue as an observer-moment of type B in the next moment.
The weight of an edge from type A to type B is the frequency at which an observer-moment of type A should expect to continue as an observer-moment of type B.
These weights are things that we might be able to change in order to help the observer-moment type.
Perhaps the “future” welfare of each type / node could be considered with equal weight in the aggregate to keep things impartial.
In conclusion… well, I’m still thinking about what the objective function might look like.
There’s some scale invariance here. E.g. suppose you duplicated the world. That duplication would multiply all token observer-moments by the same factor. This leaves you with the same types and the same distributions for future observer-moments.
In a small enough world, you can create or prevent the existence of new types of observer-moment. I think it’s unlikely (30%) that we live in a small enough world.
On the other hand, in a large enough world, all possible types of observer-moments exist. The only thing you can change is adjusting the distributions for future observer-moments for each type of observer-moment. Try to lead types of observer-moments down paths of non-suffering etc. So, this seems like an ethics of flow (rather than stock).
In the case of finite trajectories, the objective function can be the sum of value functions across all states, with each state weighted equally—where states are types of observer-moments, and each state’s value function is its immediate valence plus the expected value of its continuations. This is total utilitarianism with two modifications. 1) aggregate over types instead of tokens, and 2) sum trajectory welfare instead of immediate welfare.
What if exact copies don’t matter but future experiences still do?
I think an ethics resulting from the following two premises is worth exploring:
P1: The total moral value of subjectively indistinguishable observer-moments doesn’t scale with the number of copies, i.e. they sum to a constant value.
This is because subjectively indistinguishable observer-moments, in some sense, happen to the same “someone”. One could think of themselves as all their copies. N observer-moments that are subjectively indistinguishable aren’t felt N times by that same “someone”. Only felt “once”.
E.g. Even if there were multiple exact copies of me, of my current present experience, I might not really care personally because it doesn’t seem to change anything for me. “I” don’t notice anything.
See Wei Dai’s “The Moral Status of Independent Identical Copies” for the tension this creates with standard utilitarianism.
We can say that multiple “tokens” of subjectively indistinguishable observer-moments belong to the same “type” of observer-moment.
P2: What matters, and can be changed, for each type of observer-moment is the distribution of its subjectively “future” experiences.
You can’t “un-exist” the type of observer-moment itself, but you can change what it continues into.
A higher fraction of “future” observer-moments experiencing suffering is dispreferable.
A higher fraction of “future” observer-moments experiencing happiness/tranquility is preferable, even if only instrumentally to minimize subjectively “future” suffering.
This is related to thinking about “anthropic immortality” / “quantum immortality” / “multiverse immortality” in which distributions of post-death observer-moments are of substantial concern.
Using these lenses, the moral situation of the world looks like:
Consider a graph with types of observer-moments as nodes, such that one node is one type.
Each type of observer-moment (each node) is associated with some value/disvalue attributed to its current experience.
Importantly, the value/disvalue of the current experience is not something we can change in order to help the observer-moment type. This is already fixed.
Each type of observer-moment (each node) is also associated with any number of subjectively indistinguishable token observer-moments belonging to that specific type.
The absolute number of token observer-moments appears to only matter instrumentally insofar as it affects the frequency of expectations of other types of observer-moments.
Edges represent subjective continuation. An edge from type A to type B exists if an observer-moment of type A can possibly expect to continue as an observer-moment of type B in the next moment.
The weight of an edge from type A to type B is the frequency at which an observer-moment of type A should expect to continue as an observer-moment of type B.
These weights are things that we might be able to change in order to help the observer-moment type.
Perhaps the “future” welfare of each type / node could be considered with equal weight in the aggregate to keep things impartial.
In conclusion… well, I’m still thinking about what the objective function might look like.
There’s some scale invariance here. E.g. suppose you duplicated the world. That duplication would multiply all token observer-moments by the same factor. This leaves you with the same types and the same distributions for future observer-moments.
In a small enough world, you can create or prevent the existence of new types of observer-moment. I think it’s unlikely (30%) that we live in a small enough world.
On the other hand, in a large enough world, all possible types of observer-moments exist. The only thing you can change is adjusting the distributions for future observer-moments for each type of observer-moment. Try to lead types of observer-moments down paths of non-suffering etc. So, this seems like an ethics of flow (rather than stock).
Currently working on a full post on this. Tentatively calling it “Flow ethics”, though “Markovian ethics” would sounder cooler… DM me if interested.
In the case of finite trajectories, the objective function can be the sum of value functions across all states, with each state weighted equally—where states are types of observer-moments, and each state’s value function is its immediate valence plus the expected value of its continuations. This is total utilitarianism with two modifications. 1) aggregate over types instead of tokens, and 2) sum trajectory welfare instead of immediate welfare.