If mediocre principle holds then how can we specify one particular individual among all humans simply by uttering the word “I”? While specifying others requires using their unique features to differentiate him/her from the other humans. If “I” is understood to be this special person then isn’t it self-contradictory to say “I” am also mediocre?
From first-person perspective concept of “I” is self-explanatory. Using the word is enough to specify me since to me I am inherently special from anything else. If we take an outsider’s view and employ a third-person perspective then all human beings are in the same reference class and the mediocre principle applies. But then an individual has to be specified by its features to differentiate it from the rest. Pick one, not both.
I think that most of my properties like birth date or name are still random relative to “actual me”, as if they are some externally observable random variables. I don’t see anything non-random in my date, age, name or any other “important” properties.
I’m not sure what “actual me” stands for in this context. If we take a third-person view and randomly specify one individual among all humans then that person’s birthday is random. If we take a first-person perspective and think about the birthday of “me, as the perspective center defines” then there is no reason to treat it as random. Of course there is some small randomness in the actual time of labour. But there is no reason to think I could have been born in the 2nd century and live as someone else in history and the fact I’m living in the current era is a random outcome.
Name is a different story. I can treat my name as an random variable if the naming process can be seen as an random event. This random nature of naming can be fully understood from both the first-person and the third-person perspective. For comparison consider this: during the two days in the sleeping beauty problem one day is randomly chosen and the room is painted red. On the other day the room is painted blue. When I wake up in the experiment “the probability that today is Monday” is invalid. However “the probability that today is the room is painted red” is a perfectly valid question. Both question uses first-person center to define “today”. But the former have to switch to third-person to put the two awakenings into the same reference class. While the latter is only regarding the outcome of an random process which is comprehensible from a first-person perspective. The former is analogous to my birthday. The later is analogous to my name.
Lastly, no my theory is almost in every way against FNC. They give different answer to sleeping beauty problem. In fact I’m arguing SSA, SIA and FNC are all false because they mixed reasonings from two perspectives.
“Actually me”—it is me now, which is the only person about whom I can think in first perspective. The date of birth here is the month and day of my birth, excluding year. Month and day are random, so they could take any value between 1 Jan and 31 Dec. Despite my knowledge of the day and month of birth, they still look like they are randomly selected form this interval. So full knowledge doesn’t prevent randomness of observables.
The randomness of the year of my birth is more difficult question. It can’t be before around 1800, as nobody before this date discussed the ideas of this type (first was Laplace with his Rule of Succession).
So by “actual me” we are talking about me as from first-person perspective. Then I stand by my previous comment. There is no reason to think the time of my birth is random. Apart from the small randomness in the actual time of labour. I do not see why our discussion should exclude year and only consider month and date. Especially considering the Doomsday argument is talking about the entire history of humans. Even if only the month and dates are considered I fail to see why my birthday can be any value between 1Jan to 31 Dec. My birthday is mid August. There is no way for me to be born on 1 Jan unless we are talking about someone else entirely.
Unless of course if you are treating the starting point of our calendar year as random. Which has its merit since that point is rather arbitrary and bears no logical significance. In that sense yes technically the calendar date of my birth is random. However this only means how we denote my time of birth is random. Not that my actual birth time itself is random.
I am confused by your last paragraph. That my birth year cannot be before 1800. So instead of treating all human beings as in the same reference class like ordinary Doomsday Argument suggests, are you suggesting that only people who have ever considered ideas like Doomsday Argument are in the reference class? That is quite an extraordinary statement. I know such ideas exist but never seen any serious proponent. In comparison I think what I’m proposing is much more straightforward: If I employ first-person perspective and use introspection to identify me, or the “actual me” which is the only person there is to identify, then in this logic framework I am inherently unique. The only person in my reference class is me alone.
All discussion about days and months was to illustrate that despite my uniqueness, my properties (which are not relevant for knowing about DA) still look randomly chosen from the set of all available properties. In other words, my month of birth and the fact that I know about DA are “mutually random” variables. It is mostly the same for the year of birth, but here it is more complicated, as not all years are fit for random picking, but those which are after 1800 approximately.
For example, if I know that you birthday is in 8th month of year, but I don’t know the total number of months in a year, I could estimate that with 50 per cent probability the year has 16 month, which is very close to real value of 12. My birthday in in 9th month, so it will be 18 months estimation.
Yes, I think that the most correct referent class is the class of those who knows about DA. This implies the “end” soon, in the decades. I have a large text which overview this and other my ideas about DA here.
Guessing the number of months by my birthday is essentially treating me as an sample. It is a valid method because if we take the birthdays from a large number of people then the estimation would converge on the true value. However in this logic framework no individual is inherently unique. Everyone belongs to the same reference class. So here we shouldn’t use the concept of first-person me, or actual me, which automatically stands out from all others. Instead each individual, including myself, shall be treated equally and be specified from a third-person perspective by features. And as I have argued previously Doomsday Argument do not work if the individual is specified by features. It requires the use of first-person me and treat it as an ordinary number of a false reference class.
If mediocre principle holds then how can we specify one particular individual among all humans simply by uttering the word “I”? While specifying others requires using their unique features to differentiate him/her from the other humans. If “I” is understood to be this special person then isn’t it self-contradictory to say “I” am also mediocre?
From first-person perspective concept of “I” is self-explanatory. Using the word is enough to specify me since to me I am inherently special from anything else. If we take an outsider’s view and employ a third-person perspective then all human beings are in the same reference class and the mediocre principle applies. But then an individual has to be specified by its features to differentiate it from the rest. Pick one, not both.
I think that most of my properties like birth date or name are still random relative to “actual me”, as if they are some externally observable random variables. I don’t see anything non-random in my date, age, name or any other “important” properties.
Also, is you theory similar to full non-indexical conditioning?
I’m not sure what “actual me” stands for in this context. If we take a third-person view and randomly specify one individual among all humans then that person’s birthday is random. If we take a first-person perspective and think about the birthday of “me, as the perspective center defines” then there is no reason to treat it as random. Of course there is some small randomness in the actual time of labour. But there is no reason to think I could have been born in the 2nd century and live as someone else in history and the fact I’m living in the current era is a random outcome.
Name is a different story. I can treat my name as an random variable if the naming process can be seen as an random event. This random nature of naming can be fully understood from both the first-person and the third-person perspective. For comparison consider this: during the two days in the sleeping beauty problem one day is randomly chosen and the room is painted red. On the other day the room is painted blue. When I wake up in the experiment “the probability that today is Monday” is invalid. However “the probability that today is the room is painted red” is a perfectly valid question. Both question uses first-person center to define “today”. But the former have to switch to third-person to put the two awakenings into the same reference class. While the latter is only regarding the outcome of an random process which is comprehensible from a first-person perspective. The former is analogous to my birthday. The later is analogous to my name.
Lastly, no my theory is almost in every way against FNC. They give different answer to sleeping beauty problem. In fact I’m arguing SSA, SIA and FNC are all false because they mixed reasonings from two perspectives.
“Actually me”—it is me now, which is the only person about whom I can think in first perspective. The date of birth here is the month and day of my birth, excluding year. Month and day are random, so they could take any value between 1 Jan and 31 Dec. Despite my knowledge of the day and month of birth, they still look like they are randomly selected form this interval. So full knowledge doesn’t prevent randomness of observables.
The randomness of the year of my birth is more difficult question. It can’t be before around 1800, as nobody before this date discussed the ideas of this type (first was Laplace with his Rule of Succession).
So by “actual me” we are talking about me as from first-person perspective. Then I stand by my previous comment. There is no reason to think the time of my birth is random. Apart from the small randomness in the actual time of labour. I do not see why our discussion should exclude year and only consider month and date. Especially considering the Doomsday argument is talking about the entire history of humans. Even if only the month and dates are considered I fail to see why my birthday can be any value between 1Jan to 31 Dec. My birthday is mid August. There is no way for me to be born on 1 Jan unless we are talking about someone else entirely.
Unless of course if you are treating the starting point of our calendar year as random. Which has its merit since that point is rather arbitrary and bears no logical significance. In that sense yes technically the calendar date of my birth is random. However this only means how we denote my time of birth is random. Not that my actual birth time itself is random.
I am confused by your last paragraph. That my birth year cannot be before 1800. So instead of treating all human beings as in the same reference class like ordinary Doomsday Argument suggests, are you suggesting that only people who have ever considered ideas like Doomsday Argument are in the reference class? That is quite an extraordinary statement. I know such ideas exist but never seen any serious proponent. In comparison I think what I’m proposing is much more straightforward: If I employ first-person perspective and use introspection to identify me, or the “actual me” which is the only person there is to identify, then in this logic framework I am inherently unique. The only person in my reference class is me alone.
All discussion about days and months was to illustrate that despite my uniqueness, my properties (which are not relevant for knowing about DA) still look randomly chosen from the set of all available properties. In other words, my month of birth and the fact that I know about DA are “mutually random” variables. It is mostly the same for the year of birth, but here it is more complicated, as not all years are fit for random picking, but those which are after 1800 approximately.
For example, if I know that you birthday is in 8th month of year, but I don’t know the total number of months in a year, I could estimate that with 50 per cent probability the year has 16 month, which is very close to real value of 12. My birthday in in 9th month, so it will be 18 months estimation.
Yes, I think that the most correct referent class is the class of those who knows about DA. This implies the “end” soon, in the decades. I have a large text which overview this and other my ideas about DA here.
Guessing the number of months by my birthday is essentially treating me as an sample. It is a valid method because if we take the birthdays from a large number of people then the estimation would converge on the true value. However in this logic framework no individual is inherently unique. Everyone belongs to the same reference class. So here we shouldn’t use the concept of first-person me, or actual me, which automatically stands out from all others. Instead each individual, including myself, shall be treated equally and be specified from a third-person perspective by features. And as I have argued previously Doomsday Argument do not work if the individual is specified by features. It requires the use of first-person me and treat it as an ordinary number of a false reference class.