Everyone is unique, given enough dimensions of measurement. Humans as a species are unique, as far as we can tell. “unique on a common, easy metric” is … rare, but there are still lots of metrics to choose from, so there are likely many who can say that. If you’re one in a million, there are 5 of you in Manhattan and 1400 of you in China.
The problem with anthropic calculations is the same as any singleton observation—your prior is going to be the main determinant of the posterior. The problem with this specific calculation is why in the simulator’s green earth you’d think the chance of uniqueness on this dimension is greater if you’re simulated than if you’re not. If they can simulate you, they can simulate billions or trillions, right?
I don’t think anything observable is useful evidence for or against simulation.
Good questions. Firstly, let’s just take as an assumption that I’m very distinct — not just unique. In my calculation, I set Pr(I’m distinct | I’m not in a simulation)=0.0001 to account for this (1 in 10,000 people), but honesty I think the real probability is much much lower than this figure (maybe 1 in a million) — so I was even being generous to your point there.
To your second question, the reason why, in my simulator’s earth, I imagine the chance of uniqueness to be larger is that if I’m in a simulation then there could be what I will call “NPCs.” People who seem to exist but are really just figments of my mind. (Whereas the probability of NPCs existing if I’m not in a simulation is basically 0.) At least that’s my intuition. There might even be a way of formalizing that intuition; for example, saying that in a simulated world, the population of earth is an upper bound on the number of “true observers” vs NPCs, whereas in the real world, everyone is a “true observer.” Is there something wrong in this intuition?
Note that if your prior is “it’s much cheaper to simulate one person and have most of the rest of the universe be NPC/rougher-than-reality”, then you being unique doesn’t change it by much. This would STILL be true if you were superficially similar to many NPCs.
True, but that wasn’t my prior. My assumption was that if I’m in a simulation, there’s quite a high likelihood that I would be made to be so ‘lucky’ to be the highest on this specific dimension. Like a video game in which the only character has the most Hp.
Everyone is unique, given enough dimensions of measurement. Humans as a species are unique, as far as we can tell. “unique on a common, easy metric” is … rare, but there are still lots of metrics to choose from, so there are likely many who can say that. If you’re one in a million, there are 5 of you in Manhattan and 1400 of you in China.
The problem with anthropic calculations is the same as any singleton observation—your prior is going to be the main determinant of the posterior. The problem with this specific calculation is why in the simulator’s green earth you’d think the chance of uniqueness on this dimension is greater if you’re simulated than if you’re not. If they can simulate you, they can simulate billions or trillions, right?
I don’t think anything observable is useful evidence for or against simulation.
Good questions. Firstly, let’s just take as an assumption that I’m very distinct — not just unique. In my calculation, I set Pr(I’m distinct | I’m not in a simulation)=0.0001 to account for this (1 in 10,000 people), but honesty I think the real probability is much much lower than this figure (maybe 1 in a million) — so I was even being generous to your point there.
To your second question, the reason why, in my simulator’s earth, I imagine the chance of uniqueness to be larger is that if I’m in a simulation then there could be what I will call “NPCs.” People who seem to exist but are really just figments of my mind. (Whereas the probability of NPCs existing if I’m not in a simulation is basically 0.) At least that’s my intuition. There might even be a way of formalizing that intuition; for example, saying that in a simulated world, the population of earth is an upper bound on the number of “true observers” vs NPCs, whereas in the real world, everyone is a “true observer.” Is there something wrong in this intuition?
Note that if your prior is “it’s much cheaper to simulate one person and have most of the rest of the universe be NPC/rougher-than-reality”, then you being unique doesn’t change it by much. This would STILL be true if you were superficially similar to many NPCs.
True, but that wasn’t my prior. My assumption was that if I’m in a simulation, there’s quite a high likelihood that I would be made to be so ‘lucky’ to be the highest on this specific dimension. Like a video game in which the only character has the most Hp.