Mitchell_Porter comments on Open Thread, July 16-31, 2012 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: OpenThreadGuy 16 July 2012 12:47PM

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Comment author: Mitchell_Porter 17 July 2012 12:38:26PM 10 points [-]

Your thought experiment is like saying, "suppose I win the lottery, does that disprove probability theory?" You've basically said that their total population over time is infinite, but that you've decided to focus on the very beginning of their history. A randomly selected individual from that possible world should have an immeasurably long history behind them.

Comment author: [deleted] 17 July 2012 08:37:47PM 0 points [-]

Thanks, this is a good point. I can see that the argument is logically sound but it seems so unscientific - our future will be determined by physics, not a priori logical arguments - so why take it seriously?