Re: Doomsday Argument (was: a baysian solution)

From: Nick Bostrom <bostrom.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 22:13:36 +0000

Wei Dai <weidai.domain.name.hidden> writes:
 
> But the problem is deeper than that. The premise of the argument was not
> that one's name should be considered a random sample from the set of all
> possible names, but that the total knowledge a person has about the
> universe can be summed up as "The real universe contains a person with
> mind state M" where M is his current mind state. If this leads to absurd
> conclusions, what is the alternative?

It doesn't lead to absurd conclusions if he reagards M as a
random sample from all *actual* mind state (instances). It's only if
he erroneously think of it as a random sample from all possible mind
states that he gets the consesequence that there are more mind states
than he previously thought.


_____________________________________________________
Nick Bostrom
Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method
London School of Economics
n.bostrom.domain.name.hidden
http://www.hedweb.com/nickb
Received on Mon Apr 27 1998 - 14:26:05 PDT

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