From the SIA viewpoint the anthropic update process is essentially just a prior and an update. You start with a prior on each hypothesis (possible universe) and then update by weighting each by how many observers in your epistemic situation each universe has.
This perspective sees the equalization of “anthropic probability mass” between possible universes prior to apportionment as an unnecessary distortion of the process: after all, “why would you give a hypothesis an artificial boost in likelihood just because it posits fewer observers than other hypotheses”.
Of course, this is just the flip side of what SSA sees as an unnecessary distortion in the other direction. “Why would you give a hypothesis an artificial boost due to positing more observers” it says. And here we get back to deep-seated differences in what people consider the intuitive way of doing things that underlie the whole disagreement over different anthropic methods.
From the SIA viewpoint the anthropic update process is essentially just a prior and an update. You start with a prior on each hypothesis (possible universe) and then update by weighting each by how many observers in your epistemic situation each universe has.
This perspective sees the equalization of “anthropic probability mass” between possible universes prior to apportionment as an unnecessary distortion of the process: after all, “why would you give a hypothesis an artificial boost in likelihood just because it posits fewer observers than other hypotheses”.
Of course, this is just the flip side of what SSA sees as an unnecessary distortion in the other direction. “Why would you give a hypothesis an artificial boost due to positing more observers” it says. And here we get back to deep-seated differences in what people consider the intuitive way of doing things that underlie the whole disagreement over different anthropic methods.