The anthropic reasoning in there isn’t valid though. Anthropic reasoning can only be used to rule out impossibilities. If a universe were impossible, we wouldn’t be in it. However any inference beyond that makes assumptions about prior distirbutions and selection which have no justification. There are many papers (e.g. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0610330) showing how anthropic reasoning is really anthropic rationalization when it comes to selecting one model over another.
Actually, it’s possible to always take anthropic considerations into account by using UDT + the Solomonoff prior. I think cosmologists would benefit from learning about it.
That’s an empty statement. It is always possible to take anthropic considerations into account by using [insert decision theory] + [insert prior]. Why did you choose that decision theory and more importantly that prior?
We have knowledge about only one universe. A single data point is insufficient to infer any information about universe selection priors.
The anthropic reasoning in there isn’t valid though. Anthropic reasoning can only be used to rule out impossibilities. If a universe were impossible, we wouldn’t be in it. However any inference beyond that makes assumptions about prior distirbutions and selection which have no justification. There are many papers (e.g. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0610330) showing how anthropic reasoning is really anthropic rationalization when it comes to selecting one model over another.
Actually, it’s possible to always take anthropic considerations into account by using UDT + the Solomonoff prior. I think cosmologists would benefit from learning about it.
That’s an empty statement. It is always possible to take anthropic considerations into account by using [insert decision theory] + [insert prior]. Why did you choose that decision theory and more importantly that prior?
We have knowledge about only one universe. A single data point is insufficient to infer any information about universe selection priors.