The Self-Sampling Assumption (SSA), the idea that you should reason
as if you were a random sample form the set of all observers,
underlies many of the discussions we have had on this list. About
half a year ago I discovered some paradoxical consequences of this
assumption. It seems to imply that weird backwards causation and
psychokinesis(!) is feasible in our world. In this small paper I
describe these possible counterexamples and discuss whether they
really are as paradoxical as they appear at first blush:
http://www.anthropic-principle.com/preprints/cau/causation.doc
Comments?
Nick Bostrom
http://www.hedweb.com/nickb n.bostrom.domain.name.hidden
Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method
London School of Economics
Received on Tue Apr 13 1999 - 04:40:07 PDT