That’s not the question I’m asking. If you have two hypotheses to explain something, and one of them uses anthropic reasoning, and the other does not, how much can you favor the one that does not?
If anthropic reasoning is used to get around a prior of 10^-11, can I favor the hypothesis not requiring anthropic reasoning by a factor of 100? If I favor the latter hypothesis at all, shouldn’t that show up in the priors; and shouldn’t anthropic reasoning therefore lose out to, eg., the God hypothesis?
My other reply to the post about the updateless perspective probably fits better.
I’m not sure what a hypothesis without anthropic reasoning would be. Anthropic reasoning is just that you are certain to observe a world where your existence is possible. if two different hypotheses both allow your existence they both benefit from anthropic reasoning, if any hypothesis ever does. If your existence is drastically more likely conditional on one hypothesis being true than it is conditional on the other being true then the first benefits more from anthropic reasoning itself, while the latter implies more anthropic reasoning for the observation that you exist. Which of those hypotheses would you describe as using anthropic reasoning?
If hypothesis A has a prior of 10^-10, hypothesis B a prior of 10^-15, P(PhilGoetz|A)=10^-20 and P(PhilGoetz|B)=10^-5, then I think it’s permissible for PhilGoetz to drastically favor hypothesis B over A whenever the importance of the decision directly scales with P(PhilGoetz).
That’s not the question I’m asking. If you have two hypotheses to explain something, and one of them uses anthropic reasoning, and the other does not, how much can you favor the one that does not?
If anthropic reasoning is used to get around a prior of 10^-11, can I favor the hypothesis not requiring anthropic reasoning by a factor of 100? If I favor the latter hypothesis at all, shouldn’t that show up in the priors; and shouldn’t anthropic reasoning therefore lose out to, eg., the God hypothesis?
My other reply to the post about the updateless perspective probably fits better.
I’m not sure what a hypothesis without anthropic reasoning would be. Anthropic reasoning is just that you are certain to observe a world where your existence is possible. if two different hypotheses both allow your existence they both benefit from anthropic reasoning, if any hypothesis ever does. If your existence is drastically more likely conditional on one hypothesis being true than it is conditional on the other being true then the first benefits more from anthropic reasoning itself, while the latter implies more anthropic reasoning for the observation that you exist. Which of those hypotheses would you describe as using anthropic reasoning?
If hypothesis A has a prior of 10^-10, hypothesis B a prior of 10^-15, P(PhilGoetz|A)=10^-20 and P(PhilGoetz|B)=10^-5, then I think it’s permissible for PhilGoetz to drastically favor hypothesis B over A whenever the importance of the decision directly scales with P(PhilGoetz).