Re: another anthropic reasoning

From: Saibal Mitra <smitra.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 00:08:34 +0100

Wei Dai wrote:
> This experiment is not a "game", since the action of each participant only
> affects his or her own payoff, and not the payoff of the other player.
> Actually you can do this with just one participant, and maybe that will
> make the paradoxical nature of anthropic reasoning clearer.
>
> Suppose the new experiment has two rounds. In each round the participant
> will be given temporary amnesia so he can't tell which round he is in. In
> round one he will have low measure (1/100 of normal). In round two he will
> have normal measure. He is also told:
>
> If you push button 1, you will lose $9.
> If you push button 2 and you are in round 1, you will win $10.
> If you push button 2 and you are in round 2, you will lose $10.
>
> According to anthropic reasoning, the participant when faced with the
> choices should think that he is much more likely to be in round 2, and
> therefore push button 1 in both rounds, but obviously he would have been
> better off pushing button 2 in both rounds.

I would conclude that it is inconsistent to say that there are two rounds
and that in round one the participant has 1/100 of the measure of the second
round. If it is certain that there will be two rounds then the measures must
be equal.

Saibal
Received on Wed Mar 21 2001 - 21:37:19 PST