In the cold war example in my post, consider changing the post cold war population to higher than the pre cold war population (e.g. 5 billion); the conclusion still goes through.
An interesting thing is that if we use “natural reference class”—that is I am selected only from observers who think about anthropics, when most of them have started thinking about anthropics in 1990s or later – that is, after Cold war has ended.
However, if nuclear war would happen during Cold war, it would target university centers, so there will be less anthropics-conscious people now. This, in my view, rebuilds “anthropic shadow”.
In the cold war example in my post, consider changing the post cold war population to higher than the pre cold war population (e.g. 5 billion); the conclusion still goes through.
An interesting thing is that if we use “natural reference class”—that is I am selected only from observers who think about anthropics, when most of them have started thinking about anthropics in 1990s or later – that is, after Cold war has ended.
However, if nuclear war would happen during Cold war, it would target university centers, so there will be less anthropics-conscious people now. This, in my view, rebuilds “anthropic shadow”.