Please don’t make statements like this unless you really understand the other person’s position (can you guess how I will respond?). For instance, notice that I haven’t ever said that the halfer position is wrong.
There’s nothing to condition on because there’s no new information
This is just a restatement of SSA. By SIA there is new information, since you’re more likely to be one of a larger set of people.
just as there’s no new information when you find that you exist
Sure there is! Flip a coin and kill Beauty on tails. Now ask her what the coin flip said: she learns from the fact that she’s alive that it landed heads.
I understand that SSA is a consistent position, and I understand that it matches your intuition if not mine. I’m curious how you’d respond to the question I asked above. It’s in the post with “So your probabilities aren’t grounded in frequency&utility.”
For instance, notice that I haven’t ever said that the halfer position is wrong.
And I didn’t say (or even mean to say) that your position is wrong. I said the SIA idea is wrong.
Sure there is! Flip a coin and kill Beauty on tails. Now ask her what the coin flip said: she learns from the fact that she’s alive that it landed heads.
You can learn something from the fact that you are alive, as in cases like this. But you don’t learn anything from it in the cases where the disagreement between SSA and SIA comes up. I’ll say more about this in replying to the other comments, but for the moment, consider this thought experiment:
Suppose that you wake up tomorrow in your friend Tom’s body and with his memories and personality. He wakes up tomorrow in yours in the same way. The following day, you swap back, and so it goes from day to day.
Notice that this situation is empirically indistinguishable from the real world. Either the situation is meaningless, or you don’t even have a way to know it isn’t happening. The world would seem the same to everyone, including to you and him, if it were the case.
So consider another situation: you don’t wake up tomorrow at all. Someone else wakes up in your place with your memories and personality.
Once again, this situation is either meaningless, or no one, including you, has a way to know it didn’t already happen yesterday.
So you can condition on the fact that you woke up this morning, rather than not waking up at all. We can conclude from this, for example, that the earth was not destroyed. But you cannot condition on the fact that you woke up this morning instead of someone else waking up in your place; since for all you know, that is exactly what happened.
The application of this to SSA and SIA should be evident.
Please don’t make statements like this unless you really understand the other person’s position (can you guess how I will respond?). For instance, notice that I haven’t ever said that the halfer position is wrong.
This is just a restatement of SSA. By SIA there is new information, since you’re more likely to be one of a larger set of people.
Sure there is! Flip a coin and kill Beauty on tails. Now ask her what the coin flip said: she learns from the fact that she’s alive that it landed heads.
I understand that SSA is a consistent position, and I understand that it matches your intuition if not mine. I’m curious how you’d respond to the question I asked above. It’s in the post with “So your probabilities aren’t grounded in frequency&utility.”
And I didn’t say (or even mean to say) that your position is wrong. I said the SIA idea is wrong.
You can learn something from the fact that you are alive, as in cases like this. But you don’t learn anything from it in the cases where the disagreement between SSA and SIA comes up. I’ll say more about this in replying to the other comments, but for the moment, consider this thought experiment:
Suppose that you wake up tomorrow in your friend Tom’s body and with his memories and personality. He wakes up tomorrow in yours in the same way. The following day, you swap back, and so it goes from day to day.
Notice that this situation is empirically indistinguishable from the real world. Either the situation is meaningless, or you don’t even have a way to know it isn’t happening. The world would seem the same to everyone, including to you and him, if it were the case.
So consider another situation: you don’t wake up tomorrow at all. Someone else wakes up in your place with your memories and personality.
Once again, this situation is either meaningless, or no one, including you, has a way to know it didn’t already happen yesterday.
So you can condition on the fact that you woke up this morning, rather than not waking up at all. We can conclude from this, for example, that the earth was not destroyed. But you cannot condition on the fact that you woke up this morning instead of someone else waking up in your place; since for all you know, that is exactly what happened.
The application of this to SSA and SIA should be evident.