the decision theoretic generalization of anthropic selection will still save you.
Meaning “if I hadn’t survived I wouldn’t be here telling this to you, so everyone you hear anything from has survived all accidents they’ve ever been involved in”? True, but how would that save me?
Basically. The anthropic selection effect is, “you’ll never find yourself in a world where you’re dead”. The generalized pseudo-anthropic selection effect is, “you’ll never find yourself in a world where you’re relatively unable to influence significant decisions”. ‘Course, this is only subjectively true, so it applies to me and not you. But if I were you, it’d apply to you too. But I’m not you, so I can’t honestly endorse this as a norm, because counterfactuals screw with folks’ heads, and people confuse prescriptions and descriptions too easily.
Oh yeah, quantum suicide. The problem is that with sufficiently bad car accidents, the worlds where I survive with, say, a full-body paralysis or something vastly outnumber those where I survive in a reasonably intact body.
ETA: Wait, that’s the “plain” anthropic selection effect. I don’t get how your generalized pseudo-anthropic selection effect is supposed to work.
Meaning “if I hadn’t survived I wouldn’t be here telling this to you, so everyone you hear anything from has survived all accidents they’ve ever been involved in”? True, but how would that save me?
Basically. The anthropic selection effect is, “you’ll never find yourself in a world where you’re dead”. The generalized pseudo-anthropic selection effect is, “you’ll never find yourself in a world where you’re relatively unable to influence significant decisions”. ‘Course, this is only subjectively true, so it applies to me and not you. But if I were you, it’d apply to you too. But I’m not you, so I can’t honestly endorse this as a norm, because counterfactuals screw with folks’ heads, and people confuse prescriptions and descriptions too easily.
Oh yeah, quantum suicide. The problem is that with sufficiently bad car accidents, the worlds where I survive with, say, a full-body paralysis or something vastly outnumber those where I survive in a reasonably intact body.
ETA: Wait, that’s the “plain” anthropic selection effect. I don’t get how your generalized pseudo-anthropic selection effect is supposed to work.
There are other branches in the multiverse were do does not get to tell this story. No one notices. I think the term is surviver bias.