On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 06:43:11PM -0800, Jack Mallah wrote:
>
> --- On Mon, 2/9/09, Quentin Anciaux <allcolor.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> > Also I still don't understand how I could be 30 years old and not 4, there are a lot more OM of 4 than 30... it is the argument you use for 1000 years old, I don't see why it can hold for 30 ?
>
> Quentin, why would the measure of 4 year olds be "a lot more" than the measure of 30 year olds? I have already explained that the effect of differentiation (eg by learning) is exactly balanced by the increased number of versions to sum over (the N/N explanation) and the effect of child mortality is small.
>
> Is there some third factor that you think comes into play? Can you estimate quantitatively what you think the measure ratio would be?
>
In my book (page 146) I make the comment:
"The Doomsday argument with selection of observer moments made
according to a monotonically declining function of age would predict
the youngest of observer moments to be selected. By this argument, it
is actually mysterious why we should ever observe ourselves as adults,
a reductio ad absurdum for the Mallah argument."
Jacques has convinced me that the measure in question may be
sufficiently slowly declining over (say) the first 80 years of human
life that anthropic arguments becomes blunt. Particularly when the
categories concerned are things like childhood, adolescence, youth,
middle age and old age, rather than specific ages. Of course, infant
mortality is still very high in many parts of the world, so the
overall measure of babies is much higher than other age groups, but
one could argue that infants are not conscious until after the brain
reorganisation that occurs in the second year of life, so it is possible
that high infant mortality doesn't count.
Of course my major problem with the argument depending on the ASSA
still stands, but I'm willing to grant that this particular objection
may be overegged.
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Mathematics
UNSW SYDNEY 2052 hpcoder.domain.name.hidden
Australia http://www.hpcoders.com.au
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Received on Tue Feb 10 2009 - 23:35:36 PST