KatjaGrace comments on Outlawing Anthropics: An Updateless Dilemma - Less Wrong

26 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 08 September 2009 06:31PM

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Comment author: KatjaGrace 14 September 2009 04:18:42AM 0 points [-]

This post is an argument against voting on your updated probability when there is a selection effect such as this. It applies to any evidence (marbles, existence etc), but only in a specific situation, so has little to do with SIA, which is about whether you update on your own existence to begin with in any situation. Do you have arguments against that?

Comment author: CarlShulman 14 September 2009 01:12:27PM 0 points [-]

It's for situations in which different hypotheses all predict that there will be beings subjectively indistinguishable from you, which covers the most interesting anthropic problems in my view. I'll make some posts distinguishing SIA, SSA, UDT, and exploring their relationships when I'm a bit less busy.

Comment author: KatjaGrace 15 September 2009 05:04:26AM 0 points [-]

Are you saying this problem arises in all situations where multiple beings in multiple hypotheses make the same observations? That would suggest we can't update on evidence most of the time. I think I must be misunderstanding you. Subjectively indistinguishable beings arise in virtually all probabilistic reasoning. If there were only one hypothesis with one creature like you, then all would be certain.

The only interesting problem in anthropics I know of is whether to update on your own existence or not. I haven't heard a good argument for not (though I still have a few promising papers to read), so I am very interested if you have one. Will 'exploring their relationships' include this?

Comment author: CarlShulman 15 September 2009 01:32:21PM *  0 points [-]

You can judge for yourself at the time.