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Khoth comments on Quickly passing through the great filter - Less Wrong Discussion

10 Post author: James_Miller 06 July 2014 06:50PM

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Comment author: Khoth 06 July 2014 10:13:38PM 12 points [-]

You don't get to update on evidence that you planted.

Comment author: James_Miller 06 July 2014 10:30:16PM 2 points [-]

You certainly do when placebo effects are involved. Also, even without placebo effects, is what you said true when taking into account anthropic reference classes? Finally, if we don't know the cause of the Fermi paradox, we can not be sure that flooding the galaxy with radio signals won't causally effect the chances of our escaping the paradox so the analogy here might be to updating on the chance of your getting sick because you got yourself vaccinated.

Still, I like how you put your objection and it's one I should more thoroughly address if I work further on the idea.

Comment author: VAuroch 08 July 2014 07:33:53PM 2 points [-]

I read the logic as something like Timeless Decision Theory. If you reached this conclusion and planted this evidence, there is a reasonable chance that previous actors in similar situations did so as well, and given enough previous actors, you should see the results. Since you don't see those results, either there haven't actually been very many previous actors, or something else about your assumptions is invalid. In either case, the logical basis of the Great Filter conclusion has been drastically weakened.