The anthropic principle is contingent on no additional information. For example, if sentient life exists elsewhere in the universe, your odds of being a human are vanishingly small.
True, assuming sentient life is common enough.
This would suggest sentient life does not exist elsewhere in the universe.
Not true. This is like saying that if you roll a million sided die and get 362,853 then the die must have been fixed because the chance of getting 362,853 is 1-in-a-million!
if you roll a million sided die and get 362,853 then the die must have been fixed because the chance of getting 362,853 is 1-in-a-million!
Were that appropriate, the same mechanism would also defeat the reasoning in this post. While I agree with your ultimate conclusion, using solely the anthropic principle and no additional information, I believe you are compelled to conclude extraterrestrial life does not exist.
Were that appropriate, the same mechanism would also defeat the reasoning in this post.
I disagree. There is a natural category (sentience, reflectivity, etc.) that picks out humans over other Earthly animals and leads to a more-than-max-entropy prior for humans being more anthropically special*; this is not the case for either 362,853 or Earth.
* If you accept anthropic reasoning at all, that is. I’m sort of playing devil’s advocate in this comment; this post mostly just pushes me further towards biting the bullet of UDT/collapsing epistemology to decision theory.
True, assuming sentient life is common enough.
Not true. This is like saying that if you roll a million sided die and get 362,853 then the die must have been fixed because the chance of getting 362,853 is 1-in-a-million!
Were that appropriate, the same mechanism would also defeat the reasoning in this post. While I agree with your ultimate conclusion, using solely the anthropic principle and no additional information, I believe you are compelled to conclude extraterrestrial life does not exist.
I disagree. There is a natural category (sentience, reflectivity, etc.) that picks out humans over other Earthly animals and leads to a more-than-max-entropy prior for humans being more anthropically special*; this is not the case for either 362,853 or Earth.
* If you accept anthropic reasoning at all, that is. I’m sort of playing devil’s advocate in this comment; this post mostly just pushes me further towards biting the bullet of UDT/collapsing epistemology to decision theory.