Repetition and Value in an Infinite Universe

Eric Schwitzgebel

forthcoming in S. Hetherington, ed., Extreme Philosophy (Routledge)

On standard physical theory, it's plausible that the universe is infinite and contains infinitely many near-duplicates of you and everything you love. It is also plausible that most of your actions have infinitely many positive and negative effects. This ruins versions of decision theory that rely on summing up all the consequences of one's actions. It opens questions such as: Should we care whether our actions have infinitely many consequences? Would it be better if the cosmos were finite or infinite? Is a cosmos in which everything happens twice, or infinitely many times, twice as good as, or infinitely better than, a cosmos in which everything happens only once? I recommend celebrating the possibility of an infinitely repeating cosmos in which most of our actions have endless effects.

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