OrphanWilde comments on Induction; or, the rules and etiquette of reference class tennis - Less Wrong

6 Post author: paulfchristiano 03 March 2013 11:27PM

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Comment author: OrphanWilde 05 March 2013 11:22:30PM 2 points [-]

The popularity of anthropic reasoning varies, but it may be worth mentioning that historical data available to us here on Earth may be -completely meaningless- from a disaster probability perspective. Your being here to consider disasters rules out certain disasters having happened at all; it also rules out certain disasters happening at certain times.

It could also make the data meaningless in the other direction; it may be that intelligence is extremely unlikely without near-miss cataclysms allowing additional evolutionary passes/additional time spent in evolution at certain evolutionary stages; the shortest route to large-scale life may be an evolutionary dead end as far as intelligence goes.