nazgulnarsil comments on This Failing Earth - Less Wrong
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This strikes a bad chord with me.
We don't accept any scientific explanation that resides on 'Maybe we're just in a particularly rare or special configuration in the universe where this particular thing happens.' We assume we're in an average position in the universe and understand our observations from that framework because it's not good science to just assume you are special or unique and settle for that.
The probability of us just happening to be in the top # of universes out of an absolutely Vast number of universes seems highly unlikely if we have an even given chance of being any of those given universes. Given a set so huge, the vast majority of the cases are, by definition, average and we have no reason to assume we are not an average member of the set.
It disturbs me in some way to think of a universe where nobody has ever had a loved one die, been in a car accident or even accidentally spilled milk. But if every possible configuration must be real, that would mean there is not just one of these universes but a Vast number of them where some of them just had their first car wreck today... Living in one of these ridiculous disturbing branches would probably fantastically screw with your idea of reality.
If instead of by political and social organization and unity of purpose we sorted by 'number of unfortunate events happening' like above, it's intuitive to think we seem to be around the average: nothing ridiculously unlikely seems to persist in our universe, probability seems to roll exactly like we'd expect.
i appreciate the interesting response. here's how I think of it. If you have a one in a million event happen every day you might suspect that something is up with probability. But you can't neglect the fact that there could very well be a million different one in a million events. I dont think observing unlikely events makes it more likely that something weird is going on with your particular universe. just that the search space of unlikely events is large enough that you'll wind up seeing quite a few of them.