At one time I wondered, why am I not a particle? The anthropic “explanation” is that particles can’t be conscious. But that doesn’t remove the prior improbability of my existence in this form. Empirically I know I’m conscious, so being a particle (under the usual assumptions) has a posterior probability of zero. But if I think of myself as a random sample from the set of all entities—and why shouldn’t I? - then my apriori probability of having been conscious is vanishingly small. (Unless I change my notion of reality rather radically.)
At one time I wondered, why am I not a particle? The anthropic “explanation” is that particles can’t be conscious. But that doesn’t remove the prior improbability of my existence in this form. Empirically I know I’m conscious, so being a particle (under the usual assumptions) has a posterior probability of zero. But if I think of myself as a random sample from the set of all entities—and why shouldn’t I? - then my apriori probability of having been conscious is vanishingly small. (Unless I change my notion of reality rather radically.)