Is this really an anthropic problem? It looks more like a problem of decision making under uncertainty.
The fundamental problem is that you have two hypotheses, and don’t know which is true. There are no objective probabilities for the hypotheses, only subjective credences. There may even be observers in your epistemic situation for which neither hypothesis is true.
As an even more fun outcome, consider the situation where the mind states of the two types of entity are so exactly alike that they are guaranteed to think exactly the same thoughts and make the same decision, and only diverge afterward. Are there one, two, or four people making that decision? Does the distinction even make a difference, if the outcomes are exactly the same in each case?
If an anthropic problem wasn’t a decision making under uncertainty, it wouldn’t be worth thinking about. If anthropic reasoning wasn’t applicable to decisionmaking, it wouldn’t be worth talking about. Finding a situation where a particular concept is necessary for survival or decisionmaking is how we demonstrate that the concept is worth talking about, and not just angels dancing on pinheads.
That’s fair. One problem is that without constraining the problem to a ridiculous degree, we can’t even agree on how many of these decisions are being made and by whom.
Is this really an anthropic problem? It looks more like a problem of decision making under uncertainty.
The fundamental problem is that you have two hypotheses, and don’t know which is true. There are no objective probabilities for the hypotheses, only subjective credences. There may even be observers in your epistemic situation for which neither hypothesis is true.
As an even more fun outcome, consider the situation where the mind states of the two types of entity are so exactly alike that they are guaranteed to think exactly the same thoughts and make the same decision, and only diverge afterward. Are there one, two, or four people making that decision? Does the distinction even make a difference, if the outcomes are exactly the same in each case?
If an anthropic problem wasn’t a decision making under uncertainty, it wouldn’t be worth thinking about. If anthropic reasoning wasn’t applicable to decisionmaking, it wouldn’t be worth talking about. Finding a situation where a particular concept is necessary for survival or decisionmaking is how we demonstrate that the concept is worth talking about, and not just angels dancing on pinheads.
That’s fair. One problem is that without constraining the problem to a ridiculous degree, we can’t even agree on how many of these decisions are being made and by whom.