Huh. I don’t understand how refusing to speculate about anthropics counts as anthropics. I guess that’s what you meant by
Though it should be clearly stated that, as always, “We don’t need to talk out of our ass!” is also talking out of your ass, and not necessarily a nicer ass.
I wonder if your definition of anthropics matches mine. I assume that any statement of the sort
All other things equal, an observer should reason as if they are randomly selected from the set of
is anthropics. I do not see how refusing to reason based on some arbitrary set of observers counts as anthropics.
Right. So if you just take everything at face value—the observed laws of physics, the situation we seem to find ourselves in, our default causal model of civilization—and say, “Hm, looks like we’re collectively in a position to influence the future of the galaxy,” that’s non-anthropics. If you reply “But that’s super improbable a priori!” that’s anthropics. If you counter-reply “I don’t believe in all this anthropic stuff!” that’s also an implicit theory of anthropics. If you treat the possibility as more “unknown” than it would be otherwise, that’s anthropics.
OK, I think I understand your point now. I still feel uneasy about the projection like your influencing 10^80 people in some far future, mainly because I think it does not account for the unknown unknowns and so is lost in the noise and ought to be ignored, but I don’t have a calculation to back up this uneasiness at the moment.
Huh. I don’t understand how refusing to speculate about anthropics counts as anthropics. I guess that’s what you meant by
I wonder if your definition of anthropics matches mine. I assume that any statement of the sort
is anthropics. I do not see how refusing to reason based on some arbitrary set of observers counts as anthropics.
Right. So if you just take everything at face value—the observed laws of physics, the situation we seem to find ourselves in, our default causal model of civilization—and say, “Hm, looks like we’re collectively in a position to influence the future of the galaxy,” that’s non-anthropics. If you reply “But that’s super improbable a priori!” that’s anthropics. If you counter-reply “I don’t believe in all this anthropic stuff!” that’s also an implicit theory of anthropics. If you treat the possibility as more “unknown” than it would be otherwise, that’s anthropics.
OK, I think I understand your point now. I still feel uneasy about the projection like your influencing 10^80 people in some far future, mainly because I think it does not account for the unknown unknowns and so is lost in the noise and ought to be ignored, but I don’t have a calculation to back up this uneasiness at the moment.
Does he?
Does he what?