Considering the vast number of non-human animals compared to humans, the probability of being a human is vanishingly low. Therefore, chances are that if I could be an animal, I would be.

I do not really think you need an anthropic argument to prove that "you" couldn't be an animal; it is more a matter of definition, i.e. by definition you are not an animal. For example, there is no anthropic reason that "I" couldn't have been raised in Alabama, but what would it even mean to say that I could have been raised in Alabama? That somebody with the same exact genes and parents was raised in Alabama? In that case, it is the same as saying I have an identical twin that was raised there. The fact of the matter is that when I say "I", I am referring to someone with all of the same genes and experiences I have. To say that "I" could have been some other human is nonsensical; to say that "I" could have been a bat is even more so.

No; he's trying to stick to the point. He's stuck his neck out in other posts.

" 'God made me pregnant' sounded a tad more likely in the old days before our models of the world contained (quotations of) Y chromosomes. "

I don't know about that; the whole point about the "virgin birth" was that it was miraculous, i.e. physically impossible. Had they known about DNA, the story would have included God creating some DNA for "his" side of the deal. Saying that knowledge of DNA would have made the virgin birth less believable is like saying greater knowledge of classical physics would have made people more skeptical of Jesus walking on water. Impossible == Impossible.

"And of course I could easily go on to name some beliefs that others think are wrong and that I think are right, or vice versa, but would inevitably lose some of my audience at each step along the way - just as, a couple of decades ago, I would have lost a lot of my audience by saying that religion was unworthy of serious debate. "

So are you admitting to just going for "cheap credit"? In your post you encourage people to stick their intellectual necks out, but seem reluctant to do so yourself.

This may be a bit pedantic, but isn't the A->C relationship wholly contained in the A->B and B->C relationship? In other words, the only way A->C works is via B; there is no "extra" information in the A->C relationship.

That was a simplified account of what is going on. To include the full system, you would have to include the means by which the Demon recorded the knowledge. However it's recorded, it overwrites the information that was otherwise contained in that recording mechanism (i.e., mutual information with some environment), and this deletion of mutual information is an increase in entropy.

But in such an accounting, you would have three systems, which complicates the scenario. In the example given, the Demon is implicitly taken to include the Demon's recording devices (even if that's his brain). The fact that it has destroyed some relationship between some system (the recording device) and another is represented as higher Demon entropy that retains independence from the Y system. (There are extra states the Demon can have that have nothing to do with Y.)

Did that make any sense?

So after doing the Maxwell's Demon thing, you say that mutual information decreases, the entropy of Y decreases, so we are left with the same amount of total entropy:

M1,Y1 -> M1,Y1

M2,Y2 -> M2,Y1

M3,Y3 -> M3,Y1

M4,Y4 -> M4,Y1

However, I don't see why the mutual information would be lost; would the Demon know where he "put" the molecule, thus making the transition look more like:

M1,Y1 -> M1,Y1

M2,Y2 -> M1,Y1

M3,Y3 -> M1,Y1

M4,Y4 -> M1,Y1

This would of course shrink the phase space, violate the second law, etc. I just do not see how M would stay the same when Y changed (i.e. lose the mutual information).

Does anybody have any updates as to the claims made against Alcor, i.e. the Tuna Can incident? I've tried a bunch of searches, but haven't been able to find anything conclusive as to the veracity of the claims.

[This is not a quote, but a meta discussion.]

I find it curious that the quotes posted here have higher votes on average than the usual discussion comments, and it makes me think that I have a below-average appreciation for quotations. Why do people value them, I wonder?

I have met people who exaggerate the differences [between the morality of different cultures], because they have not distinguished between differences of morality and differences of belief about facts. For example, one man said to me, "Three hundred years ago people in England were putting witches to death. Was that what you call the Rule of Human Nature or Right Conduct?" But surely the reason we do not execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things. If we did-if we really thought that there were people going about who had sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return and were using these powers to kill their neighbours or drive them mad or bring bad weather, surely we would all agree that if anyone deserved the death penalty, then these filthy quislings did. There is no difference of moral principle here: the difference is simply about matter of fact. It may be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: there is no moral advance in not executing them when you do not think they are there. You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house.

-C.S. Lewis