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CronoDAS comments on The Hero With A Thousand Chances - Less Wrong
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It surprises me that nobody's shared my immediate reaction: that the world is most likely a simulation (run in another world that makes sense) which is set up to obey narrative causality (i.e. the Counter-Force) rather than a coherent set of laws. In other words, a Supervised Universe. And given that, I don't believe the main character should conclude that his Genre Savviness means the end of the Counter-Force...
ETA: Huh, somehow I missed ShardPhoenix's comment saying the same thing.
Yeah, the Counter-Force sounds a lot more like a fiction writer than the anthropic principle. Especially a writer like Stephen R. Donaldson, who loves torturing his characters before they manage to succeed in defeating the forces of evil.
And yet, 'fiction writer' and 'anthropic principle' are incredibly alike in nature. In both cases we select universes from among the potential space based on the desired or implied survival of the protagonist. All else being roughly equal I would advocate the anthropic principle over a hypothesised external 'creator'.
All else is not equal.
The anthropic principle would tend to involve the most minorly improbable thing.
ie. The whole volcano issue: which would be more improbable, not having the ridiculously close brush with defeat in the first place, or surviving it?
On the other hand, an authorial hand tends to seek out victories of low probability in preference over not just defeat, but also over victories of high probability.