Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on How Many LHC Failures Is Too Many? - Less Wrong

16 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 20 September 2008 09:38PM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 22 September 2008 01:14:00AM 0 points [-]

Eliezer, I used "=>" (intending logical implication), not ">=".

Zis would seems to explains it.

(I use -> to indicate logical implication and => to indicate a step in a proof, or otherwise implication outside the formal system - I do understand this to be conventional.)

I would suggest you read my post above on this second page, and see if that changes your mind.

Not particularly. I use 4 but with P(W|S) = P(W) which renders it valid. (We're not talking about two side-by-side universes, but about prior probabilities on physical law plus a presumption of survival.)

Also, in a previous post in this thread I argued that one should be surprised by externally improbable survival, at least in the sense that it should make one increase the probability assigned to alternative explanations of the world that do not make survival so unlikely.

This could only reflect uncertainty that anthropic reasoning was valid. If you were certain anthropic reasoning were valid (I'm sure not!) then you would make no such update. In practice, after surviving a few hundred rounds of quantum suicide, would further survivals really seem to call for alternative explanations?