They can’t simply be “different reference classes”.
I think I found out why you are assuming that the aliens and humans from my post share an observer moment reference class (or a reference class at the species level at least). I just noticed that Bostrom’s fsim was actually defined as the fraction of human-type experiences in sims, not human-level civilization experiences in sims, and thus I was wrong in interpreting fsim otherwise. (He didn’t define it by using the term immediately followed by a definition like he did for all the other terms, which threw me off.)
So now my objection is: Bostrom would have to argue that all human-level civilizations have human-type experiences for him to justify calculating the fraction of simulated human-level civilization experiences to draw conclusions about the fraction of simulated human-type experiences. Currently the two sides of his fsim equation don’t actually match up.
It seems to me that you were using Bostrom’s fsim human-type assumption where I was using a human-level assumption. Given my assumption all the aliens from my post could be nonsentient swarm intelligences. In this scenario it seems clear to me that the number of swarms and the probability of finding ourselves as us are near-completely unrelated. The swarm could simulate a bazillion ancestor swarms for all we care. To justify using the righthand side of the equation to talk about fsim, then, Bostrom would have to change the terms to indicate human-type experiences only. This would also mean changing the wording of the conclusion, et cetera.
I think I found out why you are assuming that the aliens and humans from my post share an observer moment reference class (or a reference class at the species level at least). I just noticed that Bostrom’s fsim was actually defined as the fraction of human-type experiences in sims, not human-level civilization experiences in sims, and thus I was wrong in interpreting fsim otherwise. (He didn’t define it by using the term immediately followed by a definition like he did for all the other terms, which threw me off.)
So now my objection is: Bostrom would have to argue that all human-level civilizations have human-type experiences for him to justify calculating the fraction of simulated human-level civilization experiences to draw conclusions about the fraction of simulated human-type experiences. Currently the two sides of his fsim equation don’t actually match up.
It seems to me that you were using Bostrom’s fsim human-type assumption where I was using a human-level assumption. Given my assumption all the aliens from my post could be nonsentient swarm intelligences. In this scenario it seems clear to me that the number of swarms and the probability of finding ourselves as us are near-completely unrelated. The swarm could simulate a bazillion ancestor swarms for all we care. To justify using the righthand side of the equation to talk about fsim, then, Bostrom would have to change the terms to indicate human-type experiences only. This would also mean changing the wording of the conclusion, et cetera.