jschulter comments on The Anthropic Trilemma - Less Wrong
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As I see it, the odds of being any one of those trillion "me"s in 5 seconds is 10^21 to one(one trillion times one billion). since there are a trillion ways for me to be one of those, the total probability of experiencing winning is still a billion to one. To be more formal:
P("experiencing winning")=sum(P("winning"|"being me #n")P("being me #n")) =sum(P("winning" and "being me #n"))=10^12*10^-21=10^-9 since "being me #n" partitions the space.
Overall this means I:
anticipate not winning at 5 sec.
anticipate not winning at 15 sec.
don't have super-psychic-anthropic powers
Checking consistency just in case:
p("experience win after 15s") = (~1)*(10^-9) + (~0)(1-10^-9)=~10^-9=~p("experience win after 5s")
Additionally, I should note that the total amount of "people who are me who experience winning" will be 1 trillion at 5 sec. and exactly 1 at 15 sec. This is because those trillion "me"s must all have identical experiences for merging to work, meaning the merged copy only has one set of consistent memories of having won the lottery. I don't see this as a problem, honestly.
I have nearly the same viewpoint and was surprised to find what seems to me to be the obvious solution so far down this thread.
One little nitpick:
From your analysis, I think you mean you expect there is a 1 in a billion chance there will be 1 trillion "people who are me who experience winning" at 5 sec.