The reason all these problems are so tricky is that they assume there’s a “you” (or a “that guy”) who has a
view of both possible outcomes. But since there aren’t the same number of people for both outcomes, it
isn’t possible to match up each person on one side with one on the other to make such a “you”. Compensating for this should be easy enough, and will make the people-counting parts of the problems explicit,
rather than mysterious.
I suspect this is also why the doomsday argument fails. Since it’s not possible to define a set of people
who “might have had” either outcome, the argument can’t be constructed in the first place.
As usual, apologies if this is already known, obvious or discredited.
The reason all these problems are so tricky is that they assume there’s a “you” (or a “that guy”) who has a view of both possible outcomes. But since there aren’t the same number of people for both outcomes, it isn’t possible to match up each person on one side with one on the other to make such a “you”.
Compensating for this should be easy enough, and will make the people-counting parts of the problems explicit, rather than mysterious.
I suspect this is also why the doomsday argument fails. Since it’s not possible to define a set of people who “might have had” either outcome, the argument can’t be constructed in the first place.
As usual, apologies if this is already known, obvious or discredited.