Re: against UD+ASSA, part 1

From: <marc.geddes.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2007 12:06:42 -0000

On Sep 27, 2:15 pm, "Wei Dai" <wei....domain.name.hidden> wrote:

>
> Yes. So my point is, even though the subjective probability computed by ASSA
> is intuitively appealing, we end up ignoring it, so why bother? We can
> always make the right choices by thinking directly about measures of
> outcomes and ignoring subjective probabilities.
>

OK, new thought experiement. ;)

Barring a global disaster which wiped out all of the humanity or its
descendents, there would exist massively more observers in the future
than currently exist.
But you (as an observer) find you born amongst the earliest humans.
Since barring global disaster there will be massively more observers
in the future, why did you find yourself born so early? Surely your
probability of being born in the future (where there are far more
observers) was much much higher than your chances of being born so
early among a far smaller pool of observers?
The conclusion appears to be that there is an overwhelming probability
that we are on the brink of some global disaster which will wipe out
all humanity, since that would explain why we don't find ourselves
among the pool of future observers (because there are none).
Is the conclusion correct?



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Received on Thu Sep 27 2007 - 08:08:03 PDT

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