Wei Dai wrote (six weeks ago!):
>I don't know why Nick hasn't told us about his new book. I just found out
>about it on his web site:
Obviously, the lesson is that one must check my website at least twice
daily just in case some world-changing event is being announced ;-)
>Anthropic Bias: Observation Selection Effects in Science and Philosophy
>Nick Bostrom, Routledge, New York, July 2002
Sorry about the sluggish response time - in fact it suggests the answer to
Wei's question: because of time pressures, I've been able to read this list
only very sporadically and partially and am sure that I have missed out on
many great discussions.
The book can be ordered from amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0415938589/103-4781209-8504658
It has a webpage, containing five free sample chapters at:
http://www.anthropic-principle.com/book/
... Here follows, if you forgive me eating up some list space, the abstract
and the table of contents:
This book explores how to reason when you suspect that your evidence is
biased by observation selection effects. An explanation of what observation
selection effects are has to await chapter 1. Suffice it to say here that
the topic is intellectually fun, difficult, and important. We will be
discussing many interesting applications: philosophical thought experiments
and paradoxes aside, we will use our results to address several juicy bits
of contemporary science: cosmology (how many universes are there?),
evolution theory (how improbable was the evolution of intelligent life on
our planet?), the problem of time's arrow (can it be given a thermodynamic
explanation?), game theoretic problems with imperfect recall (how to model
them?), traffic analysis (why is the "next lane" faster?) and a lot more -
the sort of stuff that intellectually active people like to think about…
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.......... xi
PREFACE.......... xiii
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION.......... 1
Observation selection effects.......... 1
A brief history of anthropic reasoning.......... 5
Synopsis of this book.......... 7
CHAPTER 2
FINE-TUNING IN COSMOLOGY.......... 11
Does fine-tuning need explaining?.......... 13
No “Inverse Gambler’s Fallacy”.......... 16
Roger White and Phil Dowe’s analysis.......... 18
Surprising vs. unsurprising improbable events.......... 23
Modeling observation selection effects: the angel parable.......... 32
Preliminary conclusions.......... 39
CHAPTER 3
ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLES: THE MOTLEY FAMILY.......... 43
The anthropic principle as expressing an observation
selection effect.......... 43
Anthropic hodgepodge.......... 46
Freak observers and why earlier formulations are inadequate.......... 51
The Self-Sampling Assumption.......... 57
CHAPTER 4
THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS SUPPORTING THE
SELF-SAMPLING ASSUMPTION.......... 59
The Dungeon gedanken.......... 59
Two thought experiments by John Leslie.......... 62
The Incubator gedanken.......... 64
The reference class problem.......... 69
CHAPTER 5
THE SELF-SAMPLING ASSUMPTION IN SCIENCE.......... 73
SSA in cosmology.......... 73
SSA in thermodynamics.......... 76
SSA in evolutionary biology.......... 78
SSA in traffic analysis.......... 82
SSA in quantum physics.......... 84
Summary of the case for SSA.......... 86
CHAPTER 6
THE DOOMSDAY ARGUMENT.......... 89
Background.......... 89
Doomsayer Gott.......... 90
The incorrectness of Gott’s argument.......... 92
Doomsayer Leslie.......... 94
The premisses of DA, and the Old evidence problem.......... 96
Leslie’s views on the reference class problem.......... 104
Alternative conclusions of DA.......... 107
CHAPTER 7
INVALID OBJECTIONS AGAINST THE DOOMSDAY ARGUMENT.......... 109
Doesn’t the Doomsday argument fail to
“target the truth”?.......... 109
The “baby-paradox”.......... 111
Isn’t a sample size of one too small?.......... 115
Couldn’t a Cro-Magnon man have used the
Doomsday argument?.......... 116
We can make the effect go away simply by considering
a larger hypothesis space.......... 116
Aren’t we necessarily alive now?.......... 118
Sliding reference of “soon” and “late”?.......... 119
How could I have been a 16th century human?.......... 119
Doesn’t your theory presuppose that what happens in causally
disconnected regions affects what happens here?.......... 120
But we know so much more about ourselves than
our birth ranks!.......... 120
The Self-Indication Assumption—
Is there safety in numbers?.......... 122
CHAPTER 8
OBSERVER-RELATIVE CHANCES IN ANTHROPIC REASONING?.......... 127
Leslie’s argument, and why it fails.......... 127
Observer-relative chances: another go.......... 130
Discussion: indexical facts—no conflict with physicalism.......... 132
In conclusion.......... 136
Appendix: the no-betting results.......... 137
CHAPTER 9
PARADOXES OF THE SELF-SAMPLING ASSUMPTION.......... 141
The Adam & Eve experiments.......... 142
Analysis of Lazy Adam: predictions and counterfactuals.......... 144
The UN++ gedanken: reasons and abilities.......... 150
Quantum Joe: SSA and the Principal Principle.......... 154
Upshot.......... 156
Appendix: The Meta-Newcomb problem.......... 157
CHAPTER 10
OBSERVATION SELECTION THEORY: A METHODOLOGY FOR
ANTHROPIC REASONING.......... 159
Building blocks, theory constraints and desiderata.......... 159
The outline of a solution.......... 161
SSSA: Taking account of indexical information of observer-moments..........162
Reassessing Incubator.......... 165
How the reference class may be observer-moment relative.......... 168
Formalizing the theory: the Observation Equation.......... 172
A quantum generalization of OE.......... 174
Non-triviality of the reference class: why R0 must be rejecte..........175
A subjective factor in the choice of reference class?.......... 181
CHAPTER 11
OBSERVATION SELECTION THEORY APPLIED.......... 185
Cosmological theorizing: fine-tuning and freak observers.......... 185
The freak-observer problem places only lax demands on
the reference class.......... 193
The Sleeping Beauty problem: modeling imperfect recall.......... 194
The case of no outsiders.......... 195
The case with outsiders.......... 196
Synthesis of the 1/2- and the 1/3-views.......... 198
Observation selection theory applied to other scientific problems.......... 198
Robustness of reference class and scientific solidity.......... 202
Wrap-up.......... 204
BIBLIOGRAPHY.......... 207
INDEX.......... 219
Nick Bostrom
Department of Philosophy, Yale University
New Haven, CT 06520 | Phone: (203) 500-0021 | Fax: (203) 432-7950
Homepage:
http://www.nickbostrom.com
Received on Tue Oct 01 2002 - 20:57:46 PDT