Benja_Fallenstein comments on How Many LHC Failures Is Too Many? - Less Wrong
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So if I think that (something like) the Self-Indication Assumption is correct, what about Nick's standard thought experiment in which the silly philosopher thinks she can derive the size of the cosmos from the fact she's alive?
Well, the experiment does worry me, but I'd like to note that self-sampling without self-indication produces, in fact, a very similar result (if the reference class is all conscious observers, which Nick's version of the experiment seem to assume). I give you The Presumptuous Philosopher and the Case of the Twin Stars:
If you accept this thought experiment (which requires only self-sampling) but reject a variation where T1 is ruled out because it predicts that cosmological death rays will make life impossible in all galaxies but one in a trillion (which requires self-sampling), then I think you've allowed yourself to be suckered into implicitly assuming that conscious observation is something ontologically fundamental. Though I accept that you may not be convinced of this yet :-)
(Side note: Lest you be biased against the philosopher just because she dares to apply probability theory, do also consider the case where T1 predicts that Mars had a chance of 4/5 per year of flying out of the solar system since it came into existence -- and beat those odds by random chance every single time. Of course, in that case, the physicists would already be convinced that her reasoning is sound, to the tune that they would already have applied it itself.)