If this train of thought continues along its natural course, you have to wonder why you are being “shown” the experience you have this moment as you read this, rather than some other more interesting or influential moment. Also, it is not clear that you would want to use this kind of anthropic reasoning to determine a policy; people that are not conscious but think they are would incorrectly draw the same conclusions and thus muck up the social commons with their undue senses of specialness.
ETA: There are a few other counterarguments similar to those in the previous paragraph. This has perturbed me for many years now, because the line of reasoning in the parent comment really does seem like the most intuitive approach to subjective anthropics. I’d be very satisfied to find a solution, but it seems equally likely that there’s just something pretty wrong with our intuitions about (relative) existence, which has implications for which kinds of decision theories we should be willing to put our weight on.
ETA2: And the UDT pragmatist in me wonders whether it even means anything for a hypothesis to be true, if it rationally shouldn’t affect your decisions. If anything I would lean toward decision theoretic epiphenomenalism implying falsehood.
The part of this I disagree with most is putting the probability as low as 10%. I up voted, since that seemed like just putting a number to the word “significant”, and the other claims seem about right.
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If this train of thought continues along its natural course, you have to wonder why you are being “shown” the experience you have this moment as you read this, rather than some other more interesting or influential moment. Also, it is not clear that you would want to use this kind of anthropic reasoning to determine a policy; people that are not conscious but think they are would incorrectly draw the same conclusions and thus muck up the social commons with their undue senses of specialness.
ETA: There are a few other counterarguments similar to those in the previous paragraph. This has perturbed me for many years now, because the line of reasoning in the parent comment really does seem like the most intuitive approach to subjective anthropics. I’d be very satisfied to find a solution, but it seems equally likely that there’s just something pretty wrong with our intuitions about (relative) existence, which has implications for which kinds of decision theories we should be willing to put our weight on.
ETA2: And the UDT pragmatist in me wonders whether it even means anything for a hypothesis to be true, if it rationally shouldn’t affect your decisions. If anything I would lean toward decision theoretic epiphenomenalism implying falsehood.
The part of this I disagree with most is putting the probability as low as 10%. I up voted, since that seemed like just putting a number to the word “significant”, and the other claims seem about right.