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Mark_Friedenbach 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: [deleted] 15 August 2014 06:22:31PM 0 points [-]

The anthropic reasoning in there isn't valid though. Anthropic reasoning can only be used to rule out impossibilities. If a universe were impossible, we wouldn't be in it. However any inference beyond that makes assumptions about prior distirbutions and selection which have no justification. There are many papers (e.g. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0610330) showing how anthropic reasoning is really anthropic rationalization when it comes to selecting one model over another.

Comment author: Squark 18 August 2014 06:28:41PM 0 points [-]

Actually, it's possible to always take anthropic considerations into account by using UDT + the Solomonoff prior. I think cosmologists would benefit from learning about it.

Comment author: [deleted] 18 August 2014 10:41:53PM 0 points [-]

That's an empty statement. It is always possible to take anthropic considerations into account by using [insert decision theory] + [insert prior]. Why did you choose that decision theory and more importantly that prior?

We have knowledge about only one universe. A single data point is insufficient to infer any information about universe selection priors.