I believe a fatal flaw in Jacques' and Don's arguments lies in
assuming that every conscious moment must be drawn from some a priori
distribution of such general concious moments (Self Sampling
Assumption). I think that this can only apply to the observation of
one's birth order. The world that one observes must actually be
conditional on the fact that you are born on your actual birthdate,
and on the amount of time that has elapsed since then. Because my
current age is less than the mean human lifetime, I can say that I'm
currently living in a typical time. However (assuming the validity of
QTI, which I do), if I find my self much much older than the mean
human lifetime, then I must be living in an atypical world. This world
may also be one in which homo sapiens far exceeds the usual species
lifetime (assuming there is such a value). It will probably also be
one in which evolution has largely stopped.
Cheers
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Dr. Russell Standish Director
High Performance Computing Support Unit,
University of NSW Phone 9385 6967
Sydney 2052 Fax 9385 7123
Australia R.Standish.domain.name.hidden
Room 2075, Red Centre
http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
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Received on Mon May 10 1999 - 03:54:23 PDT