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Updating in the face of anthropic effects is possible

nunosempere.com · 495 words · saved by 1 readers

You are a dinosaur astronomer about to encounter a sequence of big and small meteorites. If you see a big meteorite, you and your whole kin die. So far you have seen n small meteorites. What is your best guess as to the probability that you will next see a big meteorite? In this example, there is an anthropic effect going on. Your attempt to estimate the frequency of big meteorites is made difficult by the fact that when you see a big meteorite, you immediately die. Or, in other words, no matter what the frequency of big meteorites is, conditional on you still being alive, you’d expect to only have seen small meteorites so far. For instance, if you had reason to believe that around 90% of meteorites are big, you’d still expect to only have seen small meteorites so far. This makes it difficult to update in the face of historical observations. Now you go to outer space, and you observe the mechanism that is causing these meteorites. You see that they are produced by Dinosaur Extinction S

Updating in the face of anthropic effects is possible Status: Simple point worth writting up clearly. Motivating example You are a dinosaur astronomer about to encounter a sequence of big and small meteorites. If you see a big meteorite, you and your whole kin die. So far you have seen n small meteorites. What is your best guess as to the probability that you will next see a big meteorite? In this example, there is an anthropic effect going on . Your attempt to estimate the frequency of big meteorites is made difficult by the fact that when you see a big meteorite, you immediately die. Or, in

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