While I agree with the notion that we cannot regard ourselves as random samples from all human beings past, present and future, I find the discussion wanting in vigorously defining the reference of “us”, or “me” or by extension “my parents”. Without doing that there’s always the logical wiggle room for arriving at an ad hoc conclusion that does not give paradoxical results, e.g. while discussion SBP, you suggested that “today” could mean any day, then attempting to derive the probability of “today is Monday” from there. That just doesn’t sit comfortably with me.
Similarly, in this post, while discussing the possibility of “my birth rank” you focused on the history of my family tree, arriving at the conclusion that I cannot be born much earlier/later than I really did (realistically speaking a few month earlier at most, otherwise I cannot physically be alive/exist). But that is not DA’s claim, the uniform distribution does not imply that your physical body could be born so prematurely such to predate the first ever human being. It simply says as an unknown prior, you being the son of your current parents and you being a different human being—e.g. someone born in the 2500s, ceteris paribus, are equally likely. And the fact that you are not someone born in the 2500s is the evidence of doom soon which drives the Bayesian update. The satisfactory rebuttal to DA should undermine that.
Let’s say I concede to your argument.: since I cannot be born much earlier or much later than I really am, therefore cannot regard myself as a random sample from all time. Then what? Is it reasonably to regard myself as a random sample of all human beings born within that short timeframe of my possible birth? Are you comfortable with that? Doesn’t it also carry the underlying assumption of preexistence of souls being incarnated into bodies?
I find the discussion wanting in vigorously defining the reference of “us”, or “me” or by extension “my parents”.
Extra vigor is always nice but I don’t see how its necessary here. “I” am a downstream reasult of my parents having sex at a particular time. The same way “my father” is a downstream result of his parents having sex at a particular time. The same way “my mother” is a downstream result of her parents having sex at a particuler time and so on and so forth. This level of vigor is already enough to see that DA is nonsense.
while discussion SBP, you suggested that “today” could mean any day, then attempting to derive the probability of “today is Monday” from there.
I was showing that “Today” is a poorly specified term in the setting of Sleeping Beauty and if we try to define it as “Monday xor Tuesday”—the way we usually define it in such situations—we clearly observe that this event doesn’t happen in 50% of iterations of the experiment and so the popular claim that the Beauty always observes that she is “Awake Today” is wrong. As long as we stop thinking about “Todays” and instead make a model about the propbability experiment as a whole—as we are supposed to—everything adds up to normality.
Similarly, in this post, while discussing the possibility of “my birth rank” you focused on the history of my family tree, arriving at the conclusion that I cannot be born much earlier/later than I really did (realistically speaking a few month earlier at most, otherwise I cannot physically be alive/exist). But that is not DA’s claim, the uniform distribution does not imply that your physical body could be born so prematurely such to predate the first ever human being.
Either DA does imply that my physical body could happen to exist in the distant past or distant future or it implies that there is something non-physical about my identity. Therefore, I mention that to rescue DA we need the concept of souls. Only this way the idea of me being a different human being is coherent.
Let’s say I concede to your argument.: since I cannot be born much earlier or much later than I really am, therefore cannot regard myself as a random sample from all time. Then what? Is it reasonably to regard myself as a random sample of all human beings born within that short timeframe of my possible birth?
All probabilistic models are approximations. This model is less unreasonable and, considering where the current sanity waterline for anthropics is, this is good enough. There is still room for improvement, of course.
Doesn’t it also carry the underlying assumption of preexistence of souls being incarnated into bodies?
As long as we are not talking about me being born to different parents but simply having a different birth rank—I’m born a bit earlier, while someone else is born a bit later, for example, - then no souls are required.
The point of defining “me” vigorously is not about how much upstream or physically specific we ought to be, but rather when conducting discussions in the anthropic field, we ought to recognize words such as “me” or “now” are used equivocally in two different senses: 1, the specific physical person, i.e. the particular human being born to the specific parents etc. and 2, just a reference to the first person of any given perspective. Without distinguishing which meaning in particular is used in an argument, there is room for confounding the discussion, I feel most of our discourse here unproductive due to this confusion.
As long as we are not talking about me being born to different parents but simply having a different birth rank—I’m born a bit earlier, while someone else is born a bit later, for example, - then no souls are required.
This is interesting. I suppose being born to the same parents is just an example you used. e.g. are you a sample of all your siblings? And are other potential children your parents could have if a different sperm fertilize a different egg still you? In those cases there still would be the same problem of soul incarnations.
So my understanding to your position is that there is no problem as long as you consider yourself to be the same physical person, i.e. the same parents, the same sperm and eggs. The variation in birth rank is due to the events during pregnancy that makes the particular physical person born slightly earlier or later. And this is the correct way to thing about your birth rank.
If that’s your position, then wouldn’t your argument against regarding oneself as a random sample among all human beings (past, present, and future) ultimately be : “Because I am this particular physical human being”. And that there is no sense discussing alternatives like “I am a different physical human being”?
Without distinguishing which meaning in particular is used in an argument, there is room for confounding the discussion
I don’t see how it’s happening here, but sure let’s try to be vigorous in this sense. Let me construct the argument, while tabooing the word “I” altogether:
Dadadarren is a result of a particular sexual encounter between dadadarren’s parents. Dadadarren’s mother is a result of a particular sexual encounter between dadadarren’s mother’s parents. Dadadarren’s father is a result of a particular sexual encounter between dadadarren’s father’s parents. And so on. Therefore, dadadarren is not a random person from all the people throughout human history. Therefore doomsday inference is incorrect for dadadarren.
Ape in the coat is a result of a particular sexual encounter between Ape in the coat’s parents. Ape in the coat’s mother is a result of a particular sexual encounter between Ape in the coat’s mother’s parents. Ape in the coat’s father is a result of a particular sexual encounter between Ape in the coat’s father’s parents. And so on. Therefore, Ape in the coat is not a random person from all the people throughout human history. Therefore doomsday inference is incorrect for Ape in the coat.
And so on. Its possible to construct this kind of argument for every person who has ever lived. Therefore, doomsday inference is incorrect in general.
Using “I” simply compresses billions of such individual statements into a shorter and more comprehensive form.
If that’s your position, then wouldn’t your argument against regarding oneself as a random sample among all human beings (past, present, and future) ultimately be : “Because I am this particular physical human being”. And that there is no sense discussing alternatives like “I am a different physical human being”?
Yes, that’s exactly what it is. Unless there are souls—a non physical component to personal identity which can add additional uncertanity about the causal process, “I” is just a pointer that refers to a particular human being and therefore statement “I could have been a different human being” is as absurd as claiming that A != A.
The description of “I” you just had is what I earlier referred to as the physical person, which is one of the two possible meanings. For the Doomsday argument, it also used the second meaning: the nonphysical reference to the first-person perspective. I.E. the uniform prior distribution DA proposed, which is integral to the controversial Bayesian update, is not suggesting that a particular physical person can be born earlier than all human beings or later than all of them due to variations in its gestation period. In its convoluted way thanks to the equivocation, it is effectively saying among all the people in the human beings’ entire history, “I” could be anyone of them. i.e. “The fact that I am Ape in the Coat living in the earlier 21 century (with a birth rank around 100 billion), rather than someone living in the far future with a birth rank around 500 billion, is evidence to believe that maybe there aren’t that many human beings in total”. Notice the “I” here is not equivalent to a particular physical person anymore but a reference to the first-person perspective. This claim is what gives the DA a soul-incarnation flavour.
Therefore, if we take the first-person perspective and the physical person combination as a given and deny theorizing alternatives, there won’t be a Doomsday argument.”I am this particular physical person, period (be it Ape in the Coat in your case or Dadadarren for me). There’s no rational way of reasoning otherwise.” is what ends the DA. There really is no further need of inquiring into the particular physical person’s birth rank variations due to pregnancy complications. And as you said, this won’t fall into the trap of soul incarnations.
And that is also my long-held position, that there is no rational way of theorizing “which person I could be”, regard the first-person perspective as primitively given: “I am this physical human being” and be done with it, avoid the temptation of theorizing what the first-person could be as SSA or SIA did. Then there won’t be any paradoxes.
As always we completely agree in substance, while using different semantics.
For the Doomsday argument, it also used the second meaning: the nonphysical reference to the first-person perspective.
Yes, that’s why I’m saying that it requires the existence of some non-physical entity, which I call souls.
You seem to imply that “first person perspective” itself is non-physical, but this sounds weird to me, Clearly physicalism is not debunked by the fact taht people have first person perspectives. There are seem to be very physical rules due to which mind in Dadadarren’s body has Dadarren’s first person perspective and not Ape in the coat’s.
Notice the “I” here is not equivalent to a particular physical person anymore but a reference to the first-person perspective.
The only way how “I” here can not be equivalent to particular physical person is if we assume that there is something non-physical about personhood. People do indeed implicitly assume it all the time. But this assumption is completely ungrounded, and that’s what I’m pointing out.
“I am this particular physical person, period (be it Ape in the Coat in your case or Dadadarren for me). There’s no rational way of reasoning otherwise.”
Yes, absolutely. “I” is just a variable, referencing different things depending on who says it. When Dadadarren says “I” it means “Dadadarren”. When Ape in the coat says “I” it means “Ape in the coat”.
There really is no further need of inquiring into the particular physical person’s birth rank variations due to pregnancy complications.
Doomsday argument can be expressed in terms of birth ranks. So inquiring in the mechanism due to which physical people accure birth ranks seems to be only right thing to do.
Please do not take this as an insult. Though I do not intend to continue this discussion further, I feel obliged to say that I strongly disagree that we have the same position in substance and only disagree in semantics. Our position are different on a fundamental level.
While I agree with the notion that we cannot regard ourselves as random samples from all human beings past, present and future, I find the discussion wanting in vigorously defining the reference of “us”, or “me” or by extension “my parents”. Without doing that there’s always the logical wiggle room for arriving at an ad hoc conclusion that does not give paradoxical results, e.g. while discussion SBP, you suggested that “today” could mean any day, then attempting to derive the probability of “today is Monday” from there. That just doesn’t sit comfortably with me.
Similarly, in this post, while discussing the possibility of “my birth rank” you focused on the history of my family tree, arriving at the conclusion that I cannot be born much earlier/later than I really did (realistically speaking a few month earlier at most, otherwise I cannot physically be alive/exist). But that is not DA’s claim, the uniform distribution does not imply that your physical body could be born so prematurely such to predate the first ever human being. It simply says as an unknown prior, you being the son of your current parents and you being a different human being—e.g. someone born in the 2500s, ceteris paribus, are equally likely. And the fact that you are not someone born in the 2500s is the evidence of doom soon which drives the Bayesian update. The satisfactory rebuttal to DA should undermine that.
Let’s say I concede to your argument.: since I cannot be born much earlier or much later than I really am, therefore cannot regard myself as a random sample from all time. Then what? Is it reasonably to regard myself as a random sample of all human beings born within that short timeframe of my possible birth? Are you comfortable with that? Doesn’t it also carry the underlying assumption of preexistence of souls being incarnated into bodies?
Extra vigor is always nice but I don’t see how its necessary here. “I” am a downstream reasult of my parents having sex at a particular time. The same way “my father” is a downstream result of his parents having sex at a particular time. The same way “my mother” is a downstream result of her parents having sex at a particuler time and so on and so forth. This level of vigor is already enough to see that DA is nonsense.
I was showing that “Today” is a poorly specified term in the setting of Sleeping Beauty and if we try to define it as “Monday xor Tuesday”—the way we usually define it in such situations—we clearly observe that this event doesn’t happen in 50% of iterations of the experiment and so the popular claim that the Beauty always observes that she is “Awake Today” is wrong. As long as we stop thinking about “Todays” and instead make a model about the propbability experiment as a whole—as we are supposed to—everything adds up to normality.
Either DA does imply that my physical body could happen to exist in the distant past or distant future or it implies that there is something non-physical about my identity. Therefore, I mention that to rescue DA we need the concept of souls. Only this way the idea of me being a different human being is coherent.
All probabilistic models are approximations. This model is less unreasonable and, considering where the current sanity waterline for anthropics is, this is good enough. There is still room for improvement, of course.
As long as we are not talking about me being born to different parents but simply having a different birth rank—I’m born a bit earlier, while someone else is born a bit later, for example, - then no souls are required.
The point of defining “me” vigorously is not about how much upstream or physically specific we ought to be, but rather when conducting discussions in the anthropic field, we ought to recognize words such as “me” or “now” are used equivocally in two different senses: 1, the specific physical person, i.e. the particular human being born to the specific parents etc. and 2, just a reference to the first person of any given perspective. Without distinguishing which meaning in particular is used in an argument, there is room for confounding the discussion, I feel most of our discourse here unproductive due to this confusion.
This is interesting. I suppose being born to the same parents is just an example you used. e.g. are you a sample of all your siblings? And are other potential children your parents could have if a different sperm fertilize a different egg still you? In those cases there still would be the same problem of soul incarnations.
So my understanding to your position is that there is no problem as long as you consider yourself to be the same physical person, i.e. the same parents, the same sperm and eggs. The variation in birth rank is due to the events during pregnancy that makes the particular physical person born slightly earlier or later. And this is the correct way to thing about your birth rank.
If that’s your position, then wouldn’t your argument against regarding oneself as a random sample among all human beings (past, present, and future) ultimately be : “Because I am this particular physical human being”. And that there is no sense discussing alternatives like “I am a different physical human being”?
I don’t see how it’s happening here, but sure let’s try to be vigorous in this sense. Let me construct the argument, while tabooing the word “I” altogether:
Dadadarren is a result of a particular sexual encounter between dadadarren’s parents. Dadadarren’s mother is a result of a particular sexual encounter between dadadarren’s mother’s parents. Dadadarren’s father is a result of a particular sexual encounter between dadadarren’s father’s parents. And so on. Therefore, dadadarren is not a random person from all the people throughout human history. Therefore doomsday inference is incorrect for dadadarren.
Ape in the coat is a result of a particular sexual encounter between Ape in the coat’s parents. Ape in the coat’s mother is a result of a particular sexual encounter between Ape in the coat’s mother’s parents. Ape in the coat’s father is a result of a particular sexual encounter between Ape in the coat’s father’s parents. And so on. Therefore, Ape in the coat is not a random person from all the people throughout human history. Therefore doomsday inference is incorrect for Ape in the coat.
And so on. Its possible to construct this kind of argument for every person who has ever lived. Therefore, doomsday inference is incorrect in general.
Using “I” simply compresses billions of such individual statements into a shorter and more comprehensive form.
Yes, that’s exactly what it is. Unless there are souls—a non physical component to personal identity which can add additional uncertanity about the causal process, “I” is just a pointer that refers to a particular human being and therefore statement “I could have been a different human being” is as absurd as claiming that A != A.
The description of “I” you just had is what I earlier referred to as the physical person, which is one of the two possible meanings. For the Doomsday argument, it also used the second meaning: the nonphysical reference to the first-person perspective. I.E. the uniform prior distribution DA proposed, which is integral to the controversial Bayesian update, is not suggesting that a particular physical person can be born earlier than all human beings or later than all of them due to variations in its gestation period. In its convoluted way thanks to the equivocation, it is effectively saying among all the people in the human beings’ entire history, “I” could be anyone of them. i.e. “The fact that I am Ape in the Coat living in the earlier 21 century (with a birth rank around 100 billion), rather than someone living in the far future with a birth rank around 500 billion, is evidence to believe that maybe there aren’t that many human beings in total”. Notice the “I” here is not equivalent to a particular physical person anymore but a reference to the first-person perspective. This claim is what gives the DA a soul-incarnation flavour.
Therefore, if we take the first-person perspective and the physical person combination as a given and deny theorizing alternatives, there won’t be a Doomsday argument.”I am this particular physical person, period (be it Ape in the Coat in your case or Dadadarren for me). There’s no rational way of reasoning otherwise.” is what ends the DA. There really is no further need of inquiring into the particular physical person’s birth rank variations due to pregnancy complications. And as you said, this won’t fall into the trap of soul incarnations.
And that is also my long-held position, that there is no rational way of theorizing “which person I could be”, regard the first-person perspective as primitively given: “I am this physical human being” and be done with it, avoid the temptation of theorizing what the first-person could be as SSA or SIA did. Then there won’t be any paradoxes.
As always we completely agree in substance, while using different semantics.
Yes, that’s why I’m saying that it requires the existence of some non-physical entity, which I call souls.
You seem to imply that “first person perspective” itself is non-physical, but this sounds weird to me, Clearly physicalism is not debunked by the fact taht people have first person perspectives. There are seem to be very physical rules due to which mind in Dadadarren’s body has Dadarren’s first person perspective and not Ape in the coat’s.
The only way how “I” here can not be equivalent to particular physical person is if we assume that there is something non-physical about personhood. People do indeed implicitly assume it all the time. But this assumption is completely ungrounded, and that’s what I’m pointing out.
Yes, absolutely. “I” is just a variable, referencing different things depending on who says it. When Dadadarren says “I” it means “Dadadarren”. When Ape in the coat says “I” it means “Ape in the coat”.
Doomsday argument can be expressed in terms of birth ranks. So inquiring in the mechanism due to which physical people accure birth ranks seems to be only right thing to do.
Please do not take this as an insult. Though I do not intend to continue this discussion further, I feel obliged to say that I strongly disagree that we have the same position in substance and only disagree in semantics. Our position are different on a fundamental level.