Why are the second and third assumptions required?
The third one isn't strictly required, but you would probably see it if this version of the anthropic principle were at work, and so if you didn't see this, it would be strong counter-evidence.
The second assumption is required because when you're doing anthropic reasoning, you are essentially performing a bayesian update in response to the evidence that you are alive and performing a bayesian update. If this is more likely given some hypothesis than another. And P(I am alive| The FTW machine destroys the universe) ~= P(I am alive | The FTW machine does not...
Today's post, How Many LHC Failures Is Too Many? was originally published on 20 September 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
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This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Say It Loud, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
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