Hal Finney wrote:
>
>One correction, in the descriptions below I should have said multiverse
>for all of them instead of universe. The distinction between the SSA
>and the SSSA is not multiverse vs universe, it is observers vs observer-
>moments. I'll send out an updated copy when I get some more links and/or
>corrections and new definitions.
>
>Hal
>
> > SSA - The Self-Sampling Assumption, which says that you should consider
> > yourself as a randomly sampled observer from among all observers in the
> > multiverse.
> >
> > SSSA - The Strong Self-Sampling Assumption, which says that you should
> > consider this particular observer-moment you are experiencing as being
> > randomly sampled from among all observer-moments in the universe.
> >
> > ASSA - The Absolute Self-Sampling Assumption, which says that you should
> > consider your next observer-moment to be randomly sampled from among all
> > observer-moments in the universe.
> >
> > RSSA - The Relative Self-Sampling Assumption, which says that you should
> > consider your next observer-moment to be randomly sampled from among all
> > observer-moments which come immediately after your current
>observer-moment
> > and belong to the same observer.
>
In your definition of the ASSA, why do you define it in terms of your next
observer moment? Wouldn't it be possible to have a version of the SSA where
you consider your *current* observer moment to be randomly sampled from the
set of all observer-moments, but you use something like the RSSA to guess
what your next observer moment is likely to be like?
Also, what about a weighted version of the ASSA? I believe other animals are
conscious and thus would qualify as observers/observer-moments, which would
suggest I am extraordinarily lucky to find myself as an observer-moment of
what seems like the most intelligent species on the planet...but could there
be an element of the anthropic principle here? Perhaps some kind of theory
of consciousness would assign something like a "mental complexity" to
different observer-moments, and the self-sampling assumption could be biased
in favor of more complex minds.
Likewise, one might use a graded version of the RSSA to deal with "degrees
of similarity", instead of having it be a simple either-or whether a future
observer-moment "belongs to the same observer" or not as you suggest in your
definition. There could be some small probability that my next
observer-moment will be of a completely different person, but in most cases
it would be more likely that my next observer-moment would be basically
similar to my current one. But one might also have to take into account the
absolute measure on all-observer moments that I suggest above, so that if
there is a very low absolute probability of a brain that can suggest a
future observer-moment which is very similar to my current one (because,
say, I am standing at ground zero of a nuclear explosion) then the relative
probability of my next observer-moment being completely different would be
higher. Again, one would need something like a theory of consciousness to
quantify stuff like "degrees of similarity" and the details of how the
tradeoff between relative probability and absolute probability would work.
Jesse
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Received on Wed Nov 05 2003 - 16:56:59 PST