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casebash comments on Anthropics and Biased Models - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: casebash 15 April 2016 02:18AM

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Comment author: casebash 15 April 2016 05:14:16PM 0 points [-]

So if you generate a number randomly between one and one million, each number has a one in a million chance of being chosen. Like, if I get the number 5, I can say that it is unlikely that it is a coincidence, as there was only a one in a million chance of this happening. However, there is no reason why I wouldn't have said the same thing if I received a 6 or 335,687. So there isn't really a coincidence or a surprised, because regardless of result, we could have said something similar.

I don't believe in the magical universe theory either. My point was simply that the anthropic principle is not an effective counter-argument. If the maths suggests that a magical universe exists or that a sophistic universe exists, I suspect that you've probably set the prior probabilities to be too high.