The “Dr. Evil problem” is pretty straightfoward as anthropics goes. Equivalent situations are already discussed in various places on LW. On the other hand, I don’t know if we’ve had a basic “here’s how anthropics looks as probability theory” post. I may do that.
So Eliezer’s articles related to The Anthropic Trilemma and Boltzmann Brains basically treat the “Dr. Evil” problem as an easy introduction to harder problems. Katja Grace also has some really good articles on anthropic reasoning, some here and some on her own blog.
I’m having trouble seeing the relevance of either of those posts. Elga’s article is about static self-locating belief, i.e., which of two individuals I should believe myself to currently be. Eliezer seems only to be questioning the coherence of dynamic self-locating belief, i.e., which individual I should believe to be my future self. And I’m not presently sure how the Boltzmann Brain post touches on this at all.
The “Dr. Evil problem” is pretty straightfoward as anthropics goes. Equivalent situations are already discussed in various places on LW. On the other hand, I don’t know if we’ve had a basic “here’s how anthropics looks as probability theory” post. I may do that.
Could you clarify? Which posts are you referring to?
If you do write that article, I’d be very interested to read it.
So Eliezer’s articles related to The Anthropic Trilemma and Boltzmann Brains basically treat the “Dr. Evil” problem as an easy introduction to harder problems. Katja Grace also has some really good articles on anthropic reasoning, some here and some on her own blog.
I’m having trouble seeing the relevance of either of those posts. Elga’s article is about static self-locating belief, i.e., which of two individuals I should believe myself to currently be. Eliezer seems only to be questioning the coherence of dynamic self-locating belief, i.e., which individual I should believe to be my future self. And I’m not presently sure how the Boltzmann Brain post touches on this at all.