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[Armok]

That'd be the "the character is stupid" option.

[Pandarsenic]

It's not even stupid.

If either one even considers offing the other one, which as a widespread trope would inevitably considered, they know the other one has thought of it as well. What they don't know is if the one that knows it was the secondary (likely on account of its starting location) will be concerned enough about being considered a "disposable instance" that it will attempt to strike first, if the primary (knowing its identity the same way) will decide it doesn't want to risk the secondary striking first, or if they will both cooperate because you're trying to put our freaking character in the Prisoner's Dilemma with himself if you haven't noticed since if either betrays when the other didn't, it seizes the sum of the resources for itself and eliminates the risk of a later betrayal.

[Gigalith]

Additional note: It occurred to me that the Crown Prince could extract his data, think of something horrible to do to himself, and then inject the data. Crown Prince 2 wouldn't know of Crown Prince 1's horrifying plan, because CP1 thought of it after the data for CP2 was already extracted.

...Except, it also occurred to me that CP2 would know CP1's thoughts just before the extraction, including whatever intention CP1 had for creating CP2. So if you're just wanting to copy yourself for fun and profit, your new copy will probably not be too happy about it. If you want to create a co-equal, you might be able to live in peace with yourself, at least for a time.

While you can copy the divkit and the laptop, not all your resources can be copied and divided equally between your theoretically future selves. Suppose all twenty-nine of you simultaneously want to head for the kitchen for a drink, and then to the bathroom? Where are you all going to sleep? If you start having petty arguments, then one of you might consider doing something, or consider considering doing something about it, and then you get into the whole prisoner's dilemma situation. While you might not kill CP14 over being closer in line to the refrigerator, are you absolutely sure that CP23 won't? Absolutely absolutely? If you start trying to kill yourself, you're pretty sure you won't survive.

Really, it depends on exactly how you're setting up your multiple-you group. Are you dividing up limited resources by chance? Seniority? Merit?

[Armok]

That it's equivelent to being in a prisoners dilemma with one self is exactly the point. Only an utter moron would defect in a prisoners dilemma against oneself, because it's not a prisoners dilemma at all due to you sharing the same utility function!

Imagine the following: You are perfectly selfish. One day a MIB agent time traveller comes to you and tell you she's going to preform a psychological experiment: Today you'll be given the choice between A and B, and tomorrow the same choose, whereupon she'll go back in time.

If you chose A both times, you'll be given a big bag of candy after the choice today, get the memory wiped to prevent paradox shenanigans, given a big bag of candy after the choice tomorrow, and then get the memory restored so you remmeber eating two big bags of candies.

If you chose B both times, you'll be given a small piece of candy after the choice today, get the memory wiped to prevent paradox shenanigans, given a a small piece of candy after the choice tomorrow, and then get the memory restored so you remember eating a small pieces of candy.

If you chose B today, and A tomorrow, you'll be given two big bags of candy today, get the memory wiped to prevent paradox shenanigans, be given several very painful electric shocks tomorrow, and then get the memory restored so you remember eating lots of candy followed by painful electric shocks.

If you chose A today and B tomorrow, you'll be given several very painful electric shocks today, get the memory wiped to prevent paradox shenanigans, be given two big bags of candy tomorrow, and then get the memory restored so you remember being shocked followed by eating lots of candy.

THIS IS NOT HARD! It's not even confusing or counter-intuitive! Copies are YOU, not different people who happen to be similar to you, and applying interpersonal concepts MAKES NO SENSE! It makes no difference to any sane agent if "they" or "a copy of them" get tortured because the exact same person is experiencing exactly the same thing in both scenarios!

EDIT: as for what to do with limited resources, if we eat and go to the bathroom etc. right before copying ourselves, the copy army shuld be able to easily figure out how to merge memories or even keep them in an external repository before it becomes an issue, so we can just delete any clone that develops a need and put it's memories in a new body restored from the original non-needy template. Or if we dont want to do that for some reason just setting the stomach properties to "full" and the bladder properties to "empty" should be even easier.

[Pandarsenic]

Copies are YOU, not different people who happen to be similar to you, and applying interpersonal concepts MAKES NO SENSE! It makes no difference to any sane agent if "they" or "a copy of them" get tortured because the exact same person is experiencing exactly the same thing in both scenarios!

No more so than with identical twins (assuming their environments had been made perfectly matched until birth). Once we've split, we're no longer having identical experiences. If we find a way to network a shared mind in real time (or nearly so) to multiple bodies, yes, but if there's any mental divergence, we cease to be the same entity.

THIS IS NOT HARD! It's not even confusing or counter-intuitive! Once we no longer have perfectly identical mental states, we are no longer mentally synchronized. If we were mentally synchronized, every single copy of us would be trying to do or defer the same tasks at the exact same time, forever. The only way to prevent an infinite chain of all-of-ours-us-iterations trying to say the same thing at once, stop at once, etc., would be to find a way to break that synchronization (e.g. by having us do something randomized/pseudorandomized to select, for example, a speaking order. Otherwise, it would be HERP DERP EVERYONE REQUESTS THAT THE "THEM" ON THEIR RIGHT SPEAKS, THEN PAUSES, THEN TRIES TO TALK, THEN...) resulting in a permanent loss of perfected sameness. Once that's gone, we're no longer the same individual - just very, very similar ones. A/B and B/A, then, are not "Shocked and 2 Bags of Candy," they're "2 Bags of Candy and that poor bastard you jumped that is an alternate-iteration you whose experiences you don't share got shocked."

[Armok]

That's dead wrong, with no redeeming circumstances. You are the same person as you are now in an hour. You're the same person after you have slept which causes a discontinuity of concious experience and alters lots of things as memories are processes. You're even the same person after most cases of massive brain damage. Identity is pretty damn robust. As long as we have the same rough ideas about what is desirable in the long term there are no problems what so ever, and that is very hard to change even if we WANTED to.

This is banally simple decision theory and philosophy, both of which I have studied extensively and will hopefully be working with professionally in the not to distant future. Please stop making a fool of yourself. Although I guess you have demonstrated that the character being moronic enough to fail fatally at it anyway is not as unrealistic as I thought, since it happened to someone in this thread.

[Xegeth]

Armok, I'm going to have to agree with Pandarsenic here. You're dead wrong. In your prisoner's dilemma, you're using time travel instead of clones. By arguing about what a single person would do if subjected to a prisoner's dilemma, you're no closer to convincing anyone why clones would react like a single person. All you're doing with time travel is stating the obvious that an individual would act in their own interest. The point that you have failed to address at all is why clones would be affected by or care at all about the suffering of a single clone even though they have different memories and experiences. This is assuming that the memories of the clones don't end up being merged at a later point.

Here's an alternative situation for you to consider that actually uses clones. An exact copy of you is made and you are both given a month to lead different lives with no contact with each other. After that month is up, you must decide which of you must die. If you sacrifice yourself, your clone will be given enough money to never have to worry about anything again. If you kill the clone, you get nothing more than your life. Would you be willing to be the version that dies, and why? Note that I am not talking about what you'd have the character do, I'm talking about what you personally would do.

[Armok]

Yes, neither clone would hesitate a second to be the one to die and would be offended by the notion they'd act otherwise. Likewise of you revealed you secretly made a clone of me a month ago and gave me the offer right now, although I might grumble a bit about the inconvenience from forgetting stuff and how I'd have prefered to be told in advance so I could write down important stuff.

Secondly, I'm arguing about how the clones SHOULD act not how they WILL act, if you're making the mistake perhaps the protagonist will make the same mistake.

Anyway, for the actual argument, let's use the common technique of Rationalist Taboo and throw out the concepts of "the same person", "I", etc. and the like because they are just causing misunderstandings and not being useful. Since our goals reference "I" be need to replace it with what we actually mean: "a person which fulfils [list of properties we consider part of our identity]". Now, a big change such as say, losing our conscience might make us different enough to warrant calling us a different person, MIGHT, but such events are very rare, not part of the cloning process, not made significantly more likely by cloning, and since they fell out of the class of people we care about we don't care about their suffering or death either and can safely delete them. Oh, did I mention that clones similar to the original will always have an advantage? They will, because diverging clones will do so one or a few at a time, and in different ways, while the ones staying close to the original will be a single unified mass. In fact, looking at the kind of timescale where divergence will always happen sooner or later, clones is the only way to survive, since they'll all compare everyone to the original and kill of any who diverges, replacing it with a copy of a non divergent clone, or even a direct copy of the original from storage.

Ugh, I'm sick of discussing philosophy on a level that'd be preschool in any reasonable society, will we be done soon?

(Also, the memories probably will be merged.)[/list]

[Pandarsenic]

> Yes, neither clone would hesitate a second to be the one to die and would be offended by the notion they'd act otherwise.

And you don't see that as a problem why? If one can die to help the other, it will. If something fired a Giant Doom Laser at two of our clones, we get garbage like both trying to push the other out of the way and they'd both end up eating Giant Doom Laser. If both want to say something, both would try to let the other talk first.

Now apply that to every. Action. Any of them take. Ever. I don't think you're adequately lacking in common sense since you just named exactly the sort of problem we have. If there aren't meaningful differences, we're forced to make them so we stop trying to do the same thing over and over.

Also, we're reaching Same River Twice problems here, but I don't deny that I'm not the same person as I was X time ago. I'm no longer sharing the precise mental qualities necessary for that to be the case. Hell, I don't even have the same materials composing me as I did an even longer time ago. All I have defining me as the "same" person is the very abstract concept of a unified being "I" that you just threw out.

Memories are going to be merged? Great! Now we have to find a way to desync ourselves to get everything done each time that happens. If you can find a way to do it in the first place. If you have, let us know.

Oh, and the bit about diverging you mentioned? If it diverges, it's going to hide it that because it knows it'll be terminated.

Then at an opportune time (inopportune for us) it'll go rogue.

And so fucking help me, if a rogue "us" runs off with our DivKit and then blows us all up...


tl;dr: Ugh, I'm sick of discussing philosophy on a level that'd be preschool in any reasonable society, will Armok catch up soon?

[Armok]

Please tell me you're just trolling and not actually that stupid. The clones are just two bodies of the same person, and are not going to competing nor sacrificing for each other any more than my two hands. Hell, in the specific case of me the increase in intra-brain communication or memory mismatch wouldn't even be anything I don't already deal with on a daily basis. Come to think of it maybe that's why I've developed such good intuitions for this kind of thing.

"Desync" in not a thing that needs doing, the brain is chaotic enough that the different positions of the copies will naturally make them take up different tasks.

A divergent copy trying to hide isn't going to succeed for long. Remember that false positives are not a problem.

Now STOP this trolling. I check this thread for the game and I don't have to time to deal with your bull**** ruining it, nor type out all of timeless decision theory 101 on a random forum, and nobody would read links.

[Ochita]

Armok, I honestly think that in this situation, is that you are the person who is taking this way too personally, and so your overreacting. And with you saying that everyone else is trolling, you are in fact the person who is letting this go on.

Lets see what the extent of our powers are.

[Armok]

Yes I'm taking this personally. And yes, it's probably causing me to overreact. I'm just so unimaginably frustrated with having my actual area of expertise being one where *everyone* think their opinion is valid. If this was, say, quantum physics or palaeontology this kind of thing wouldn't happen, since people who are not experts know there exists experts, how to identify them, and that if you encounter one that disagrees with you you should probably change your mind.

If an expert in history or geology or archeology or mathematics or medicine or biology or any of a myriad others correct me about something in their field, I feel a bit embarrassed, thank them for teaching me, and then change my mind. I'd do this for pandar as well in whatever narrow area he might work and have more experience than me. I get pissed when I don't get the same behaviour in return.

[Gigalith]

Due to SUDDEN SEMI-SERIOUS PERSONAL SEMI-CRISIS I haven't really had the energy to do a full update. (NINJA EDIT: Every time I say this I end up writing a full page worth anyway. Hooray! My inner work ethic is pleased and appeased!) Until then...

MOAR PEN EXPERIMENTS!

You consider creating a pen that would banish whatever it touched, but what would happen if you dropped it? Worse yet, on your foot?

A laser pointer of death, however, is much more reasonable. You don't have any spotlights around the house, but there's a streetlamp right outside. You inject the light source into a personal laser pointer, only then remembering you should have copied it first. Whoops! ...Not like they're that expensive.

Your doom pointer, though through what glitch or side-effect you can't tell, weighs way more than it did earlier. At 400~ watts, it is more powerful than some industrial lasers. You know, those things they cut steel with. It also appears that the batteries are still necessary, though how exactly this all works is anyone's guess. You use this 'feature' for an improvised safety. Not bad for a divine weapon.

Speaking about divine weapons, what's the whole point of being a chaos demigod if you aren't going to corrupt things? You put a pen in your back yard, and from a hopefully safe distance Corrupt() it.

Initially, the pen vibrates, slowly changing color and shape. Several seconds later, the pen is hideously twisted, with multiple heads and mutant ends, while glowing ink spills through the air in bizarre patternlessness. *CRACK*! The Abhorrent Unpen flashes and is gone, perhaps as it's velocity or position was compromised, and you duck from flying splinters. None of them hit you, but you can't work up the courage to touch them without a ten foot pole.

You decide the warnings against corrupting a divkit are most certainly wise.

[Toady One]

(please take the derailing argument to PMs or to nowhere.  it is beginning to bother people.)

[Xegeth]

As a test of our abilities, take two objects, for example a pen and a pencil, and mix their properties randomly. Hopefully we'll end up with a fun useful combination of both. Next, flip a coin ten times and study the result. Can we remove randomness from a system? Also, we should maybe consider adding pens to our portfolio.