Unknowns comments on Beauty quips, "I'd shut up and multiply!" - Less Wrong

6 Post author: neq1 07 May 2010 02:34PM

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Comment author: Unknowns 07 May 2010 04:14:46PM 1 point [-]

As I said in the other comment, this argument is just like arguing that if I exist, then there are likely more people, since there would be more ways that it could happen that I existed, i.e. I could be any of them of the people who exist.

But in fact "I" am just one of the people who exist, no matter how many or few there are, so the inevitable fact of my existence cannot increase the probability of many people existing. Likewise, when Sleeping Beauty wakes up, that is just the one case or one of the million cases; either way it would still have happened. It would not have happened with greater likelihood in the million cases.