I have an ongoing disagreement with an associate who suggests that you should take ‘this planet has life’ into account by conditioning on ‘there exists a planet with life’.
This seems like SSA vs SIA, so maybe you should first agree with your associate on which assumption each one of you is using.
This isn’t right. Both SSA and SIA are ways to take indexical information into account. Katja’s associate seems to be denying that indexical information makes a difference. So he or she would presumably reject the scientific relevance of both SSA and SIA.
Yes. SSA is complicated though—it effectively doesn’t take your existence as a thing in the reference class as evidence, but then it does take any further information you get about yourself into account.
Yes, my associate rejects the scientific relevance of any anthropic principles.
This seems like SSA vs SIA, so maybe you should first agree with your associate on which assumption each one of you is using.
This isn’t right. Both SSA and SIA are ways to take indexical information into account. Katja’s associate seems to be denying that indexical information makes a difference. So he or she would presumably reject the scientific relevance of both SSA and SIA.
Yes. SSA is complicated though—it effectively doesn’t take your existence as a thing in the reference class as evidence, but then it does take any further information you get about yourself into account.
Yes, my associate rejects the scientific relevance of any anthropic principles.