First, update on “there exists a Less Wronger with the handle ‘cousin it’”, along with everything else you know about you.
Depending on your posterior, there’s basically two ways this could go:
Uniform from 1 human to so many that of course there’s one like the one you know.
You now find very strong evidence that cousin it is the 50th human. You update the probability that he is from about 10^-100 to 10^-80.
Log distribution, with slightly shorter tails.
You now find very strong evidence that cousin it is the 50th human. You update the probability that he is from about 10^-10 to about 1-10^-10. Now, for all intents and purposes, you know cousin it is the 50th human. This is more likely if there are only 1000 people.
Basically, either the doomsday argument is correct, or humanity has been around for a very, very long time.
Incidentally, this isn’t quite the same as what atucker and I think about it. If I only experienced one bit, I’d still think it works (ignoring the fact that if I had thoughts that complex, it would be more than one bit). It’s still pretty close though.
First, update on “there exists a Less Wronger with the handle ‘cousin it’”, along with everything else you know about you.
Depending on your posterior, there’s basically two ways this could go:
Uniform from 1 human to so many that of course there’s one like the one you know.
You now find very strong evidence that cousin it is the 50th human. You update the probability that he is from about 10^-100 to 10^-80.
Log distribution, with slightly shorter tails.
You now find very strong evidence that cousin it is the 50th human. You update the probability that he is from about 10^-10 to about 1-10^-10. Now, for all intents and purposes, you know cousin it is the 50th human. This is more likely if there are only 1000 people.
Basically, either the doomsday argument is correct, or humanity has been around for a very, very long time.
Incidentally, this isn’t quite the same as what atucker and I think about it. If I only experienced one bit, I’d still think it works (ignoring the fact that if I had thoughts that complex, it would be more than one bit). It’s still pretty close though.