For the last point, is it fair to say that you don’t have to consider SIA in terms of any made-up reference class?
Even if you only consider “people in your epistemic situation”, epistemic situation is a subjective state, and the only subjective experience you have is that of your own. So what qualifies “people in your epistemic situation” has to be a judgment call, or in a sense, made up. Do brains in jars that are being fed with similar neural signals count? as Adam Elga discussed in “Defending earth with self-locating probability”. What about computer programs like Bostrom’s Simulation Argument? Depending on your judgment of what “people in your epistemic situation” include, the answer to those problems would be drastically different. You are either certain you are a physical person or be quite confident that you are just a brain/program.
The only problems where such kinds of judgments won’t affect the conclusions are those cases the effect of reference class cancels out. Like in Doomsday’s argument.
Don’t get me wrong I am not supporting SSA in any way. The reference class problem is definitely worse for SSA. But SIA is not free from it, after all, the people-you-could-actually-be is still a made-up concept that lacks a solid definition.
For the last point, is it fair to say that you don’t have to consider SIA in terms of any made-up reference class?
Even if you only consider “people in your epistemic situation”, epistemic situation is a subjective state, and the only subjective experience you have is that of your own. So what qualifies “people in your epistemic situation” has to be a judgment call, or in a sense, made up. Do brains in jars that are being fed with similar neural signals count? as Adam Elga discussed in “Defending earth with self-locating probability”. What about computer programs like Bostrom’s Simulation Argument? Depending on your judgment of what “people in your epistemic situation” include, the answer to those problems would be drastically different. You are either certain you are a physical person or be quite confident that you are just a brain/program.
The only problems where such kinds of judgments won’t affect the conclusions are those cases the effect of reference class cancels out. Like in Doomsday’s argument.
Don’t get me wrong I am not supporting SSA in any way. The reference class problem is definitely worse for SSA. But SIA is not free from it, after all, the people-you-could-actually-be is still a made-up concept that lacks a solid definition.