Thank you Yair,
As to #1: I am glad we agree regarding the awakening game.
As to #2: I think you may be operating under a differing understanding/definition of universalism than the one Zuboff is using in his brief proof. As far as I understand it here, universalism is not trying to answer the question of why out of all the consciousness that exists you are conscious of this part, but rather, why out of all the (far more numerous) potential people (most of whom were never born) you should be so fortunate to count yourself among those who were born.
Consider this slight variation of the Awakening Game (which Zuboff calls the Hotel of Countless Rooms). In this version, countless (let’s say 2^1000) people are put to sleep in the Hotel of Countless Rooms. Then 1000 fair coins are tossed to yield a 1000 digit binary number. Then one of two games is played:
Hard version: The occupant of that hotel room matching that number is awakened.
Easy version: All sleepers in every of the 2^1000 rooms is awakened.
Since you agree with the logic of the more basic Awakening Game, I would assume you would also reason that if you participated in this Hotel of Countless Rooms Awakening Game, and if you found yourself awakened, then you could correctly reason that it is far more likely the Easy Game was played, rather than you being the one lucky person out of the 2^1000 people, to have had the sequence of coins match their room number.
In this version, the parallel to universalism is much clearer. Consider all the other 2^1000-1 people who were left behind in the hard version, these are like all the possible people (all the possible genetic combinations of sperm cells and eggs) which are never realized on earth. That you now find yourself to be among the very few (among all the possible) people to have been born should be shocking, under the Usual View. It is like being the lone person awakened under the hard version of the Hotel of Countless Rooms.
Given the improbability of finding ourselves to be among those few, are we not then equally justified in reasoning that the “Usual View” is not the “game that was played”, but rather, Universalism, which says it doesn’t matter with what genes you happened to be born with, any consciousness that appears anywhere, is consciousness you will find yourself to be within?
It seems to me that one must use the SIA to justify your position for the Awakening Game, since sleepers are possible rather than actual observers.
Don’t you agree?
Note that in reality there are no actual paradoxes, only results that challenge our intuitions or assumptions. The awakening game and its implication of universalism is an example of such a challenge.