An inference requires more than one data point. Let me give you a number: 7. Care to tell me what pattern this came from?
Your extra data points are summarized by your prior: you assume that your existence was randomly selected from the range of all possible human existences over all time, and then using that prior to reason about the doomsday paradox. I am saying that this prior has absolutely no rational basis (unless you are a theist and believe in [re-]incarnation).
You keep repeating this, but your only defense of it consists of examples of situations in which a single data point does not give you much information. This does not show that a single data point can never give you a significant amount of information. I have already explained how in the doomsday argument, a single data point does give you a lot of information, but your response was simply to repeat your claim and provide another example in which a single data point gives you less information.
Let me give you a number: 7. Care to tell me what pattern this came from?
Sure. 7 is a very common number for people to pick when they try to come up with an arbitrary number, so this is significant (though not overwhelming) evidence that you made up an arbitrary number, as opposed to, for instance, using a random number generator, or counting something in particular, etc. There’s been plenty of research into human random number generation, so this tells me quite a bit about what other numbers tend to be generated by the same process that you used to generate the number 7. For instance, 3 is also quite common, and even numbers and multiples of 5 are rare.
Your extra data points are summarized by your prior
I’m not sure what you mean by that. A prior shouldn’t count as a data point, and if you’re counting a prior as a data point anyway, then even in your examples of 1 data point being insufficient to draw confident conclusions from, we actually have more than 1 data point, since I have a prior about those, too.
you assume that your existence was randomly selected from the range of all possible human existences over all time, and then using that prior to reason about the doomsday paradox. I am saying that this prior has absolutely no rational basis
What do you suggest instead? Given only the information that you are a human, do you give more than 50% credence that you are one of the first 50% of humans to be born? Wouldn’t that seem rather absurd?
(unless you are a theist and believe in [re-]incarnation)
I don’t see what God or reincarnation could possibly have to do with this topic.
What I said was:
An inference requires more than one data point. Let me give you a number: 7. Care to tell me what pattern this came from?
Your extra data points are summarized by your prior: you assume that your existence was randomly selected from the range of all possible human existences over all time, and then using that prior to reason about the doomsday paradox. I am saying that this prior has absolutely no rational basis (unless you are a theist and believe in [re-]incarnation).
You keep repeating this, but your only defense of it consists of examples of situations in which a single data point does not give you much information. This does not show that a single data point can never give you a significant amount of information. I have already explained how in the doomsday argument, a single data point does give you a lot of information, but your response was simply to repeat your claim and provide another example in which a single data point gives you less information.
Sure. 7 is a very common number for people to pick when they try to come up with an arbitrary number, so this is significant (though not overwhelming) evidence that you made up an arbitrary number, as opposed to, for instance, using a random number generator, or counting something in particular, etc. There’s been plenty of research into human random number generation, so this tells me quite a bit about what other numbers tend to be generated by the same process that you used to generate the number 7. For instance, 3 is also quite common, and even numbers and multiples of 5 are rare.
I’m not sure what you mean by that. A prior shouldn’t count as a data point, and if you’re counting a prior as a data point anyway, then even in your examples of 1 data point being insufficient to draw confident conclusions from, we actually have more than 1 data point, since I have a prior about those, too.
What do you suggest instead? Given only the information that you are a human, do you give more than 50% credence that you are one of the first 50% of humans to be born? Wouldn’t that seem rather absurd?
I don’t see what God or reincarnation could possibly have to do with this topic.