Are two identical instances of a quale the same thing as one?

• +..Dark rock


• +..Into the desert!


• +..lo fi longing

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For an inkling of why it might not be, consider a thought experiment. Imagine that physicists discover that space is actually many-layered like puff pastry; the number of layers varies from place to place; the layers split in some places, and their contents split with them. Every layer has identical contents, though. Hence, although we do not feel it, instances of us split and merge as we move around. Suppose that in London space has a million layers, while in Oxford it has only one. I travel frequently between the two cities, and one day I wake up having forgotten which one I am in. It is dark. Should I bet that I am much more likely to be in London, just because a million times as many instances of me ever wake up in London as in Oxford? I think not. In that situation it is clear that counting the number of instances of oneself is no guide to the probability one ought to use in decision-making. We should be counting histories not instances. In quantum theory, the laws of physics tell us how to count histories by measure. In the case of multiple simulations, I know of no good argument for any way of counting them: it is an open question. But I do not see why repeating the same simulation of me a million times should in any sense make it ‘more likely’ that I am a simulation rather than the original. What if one computer uses a million times as many electrons as another to represent each bit of information in its memory? Am I more likely to be ‘in’ the former computer than the latter?
Deutsch, David.