KatjaGrace comments on Your existence is informative - Less Wrong

2 Post author: KatjaGrace 30 June 2012 02:46PM

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Comment author: KatjaGrace 30 June 2012 06:15:32PM *  1 point [-]

Perhaps, but then there is the question of how you should pretend they were chosen. This is controversial.

If you weren't alive you wouldn't be observing "I'm alive". If X wasn't true you wouldn't be observing X. Could you be more clear on how you think the logic differs?

Comment author: dspeyer 30 June 2012 08:09:12PM 0 points [-]

Slight double-meaning in the word observing:

When I said "if you weren't alive you wouldn't be observing" I meant you wouldn't be seeing whether you were alive or not.

When you said "If X wasn't true you wouldn't be observing X" you meant you wouldn't be seeing that X is true.

I'm finding my second paragraph surprisingly hard to reword.

Comment author: KatjaGrace 01 July 2012 11:21:00PM 0 points [-]

If your existence depends on X, there are two possibilities: you observe X, you observe nothing

If your existence doesn't depend on X but you have some other way of observing whether X is true, the possibilities are: you observe X, you observe not X.

Do you think that observing X provides different information about something else in these two cases?