I am not convinced that the Presumptuous Philosopher is a problem for SIA for the example given. Firstly I notice that the options are both finite. For a start you could just reject this and say any TOE would have infinite observers (Tegmark L4 etc) and the maths isn’t set up for infinities. Does the original theory/doom hypothesis even work for uncountable infinite number of observers?
Secondly you could say that humanity (or all conscious beings) in both cases is a single reference class, not trillions. For example if all observers become one hive mind in both cases then would that change the odds? It becomes 1:1 then.
Taking that further can we apply the principle to possible universes? There would be more universes with many tunable parameters, (most of which did very little) than fewer. So for a given “elegant” universe with observers, there would be some infinity more very similar universes with more rules/forces that are very small and don’t affect observers but are measurable and make that universe appear “messy”. Taking that reasoning further we would expect to find ourselves in a universe that appears like there is only a sequence of approximations to a universal theory for that universe. The actual laws would still be fixed, but maximally “messy” and we would keep finding exceptions and new forces with ever finer measurements.
Additionally even if we accept SSA and reject SIA all the doomsday argument says is that in ~100K years our current reference class won’t be there. Isn’t that practically a given in a post Singularity world that human descendants consciousness will be different even in the slowest takeoff most CEV satisfying conditions?
So its hard to see who would be affected by this. You would have to believe that the multiverse and associated infinities doesn’t invalidate the argument, accept SSA, reject SIA, and believe that a successful Singularity would mostly leave humanities descendants in the same reference class?
I am not convinced that the Presumptuous Philosopher is a problem for SIA for the example given. Firstly I notice that the options are both finite. For a start you could just reject this and say any TOE would have infinite observers (Tegmark L4 etc) and the maths isn’t set up for infinities. Does the original theory/doom hypothesis even work for uncountable infinite number of observers?
Secondly you could say that humanity (or all conscious beings) in both cases is a single reference class, not trillions. For example if all observers become one hive mind in both cases then would that change the odds? It becomes 1:1 then.
Taking that further can we apply the principle to possible universes? There would be more universes with many tunable parameters, (most of which did very little) than fewer. So for a given “elegant” universe with observers, there would be some infinity more very similar universes with more rules/forces that are very small and don’t affect observers but are measurable and make that universe appear “messy”. Taking that reasoning further we would expect to find ourselves in a universe that appears like there is only a sequence of approximations to a universal theory for that universe. The actual laws would still be fixed, but maximally “messy” and we would keep finding exceptions and new forces with ever finer measurements.
Additionally even if we accept SSA and reject SIA all the doomsday argument says is that in ~100K years our current reference class won’t be there. Isn’t that practically a given in a post Singularity world that human descendants consciousness will be different even in the slowest takeoff most CEV satisfying conditions?
So its hard to see who would be affected by this. You would have to believe that the multiverse and associated infinities doesn’t invalidate the argument, accept SSA, reject SIA, and believe that a successful Singularity would mostly leave humanities descendants in the same reference class?