Not unless you have a strong reason to privilege the state of being an American as especially interesting. Otherwise, you’re in the position Jordan mentioned of just knowing you’re in one unexceptional condition out of many.
One thing you could say based on your being an American is that you have weak evidence that America is likely to be one of the more populous countries, and strong evidence that there’s no country thousands or billions of times more populous than America. Both conclusions are correct.
And further, if a Luxembourgian posts a reply here saying “My Luxembourgian citizenship disproves the anthropic principle”, that doesn’t count, because you’re not him and he’s self-selected by posting here o_O
Not unless you have a strong reason to privilege the state of being an American as especially interesting. Otherwise, you’re in the position Jordan mentioned of just knowing you’re in one unexceptional condition out of many.
One thing you could say based on your being an American is that you have weak evidence that America is likely to be one of the more populous countries, and strong evidence that there’s no country thousands or billions of times more populous than America. Both conclusions are correct.
And further, if a Luxembourgian posts a reply here saying “My Luxembourgian citizenship disproves the anthropic principle”, that doesn’t count, because you’re not him and he’s self-selected by posting here o_O
So we seem to have concluded that my Irish citizenship disproves the anthropic principle, and I can know this, but you cannot know it :-)
As a matter of fact, I live in Ireland (although I’m a US citizen). That coincidence probably disproves some sort of important principle right there.
I think you’ve mentioned before that you live in Dublin; I live in Cork, so sadly we’re a little too far to meet up for a chat one night.
It probably does :-)
Yeah, a little too far, but let me know if you’re going to be in Dublin at any stage, and I’ll do likewise if I’m going to be in Cork.