One possibility for why we do not find ourself in an old, galaxy-spanning
civilization has already been mentioned--perhaps after a certain point all
the individual minds in a civilization unite into a single Borg-like
hivemind, and this reduction in the number of minds might imply that the
self-sampling assumption would predict we'll find ourselves in a time before
this happens (although if the hivemind lasts for billions of years, the
argument might not work because this individual mind would probably have
more separate observer-moments than the total number of observer-moments of
the hundred billion or so individuals who lived before the mind-merging).
Another possibility is suggested by a theory about how the measure on
observer-moments could be influenced by the likelihood of future
duplications, which I discussed a bit in this post (in response to a post by
Bruno Marchal discussing the same idea):
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m4841.html
If observer-moments which are more likely to have more copies of themselves
existing in the future have higher measure, then this might also suggest why
I find myself living before civilization has spread throughout the
galaxy--perhaps observers who are alive right at the time when the
"technological singularity" occurs are the ones who are most likely to
become the earliest uploads and to have the most copies of themselves living
in the future galaxy-spanning civilization, thus giving the pre-singularity
versions of themselves a much higher measure than any post-singularity
observer-moments.
Jesse
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Received on Sat Jan 10 2004 - 16:42:45 PST