I have found it useful to replace all references to “I” or “you” in anthropic problems with specifications of instances of actors or robots running a decision procedure. This extends to treating, e.g., utility as a variable in these decision procedures.
I think it is a good stratergy. It will highlight the paradoxes in anthropics are due to the involvement of indexicals such as “I” or “now” in the argument.
I didn’t use decision process to discuss anthropics because it involves defining the subject of utility. How one specify it involves assumptions that already determines the answer. For example is a program running on two independent instance considered the same actor? Should the results be pooled together upon evaluation? etc.
I have found it useful to replace all references to “I” or “you” in anthropic problems with specifications of instances of actors or robots running a decision procedure. This extends to treating, e.g., utility as a variable in these decision procedures.
I think it is a good stratergy. It will highlight the paradoxes in anthropics are due to the involvement of indexicals such as “I” or “now” in the argument.
I didn’t use decision process to discuss anthropics because it involves defining the subject of utility. How one specify it involves assumptions that already determines the answer. For example is a program running on two independent instance considered the same actor? Should the results be pooled together upon evaluation? etc.
That is the beauty of an operation specification. My motto is: If you can’t program it you don’t understand it. :-))