From: Nick Bostrom (bostrom@ndirect.co.uk)
Date: Fri Aug 28 1998 - 11:08:34 MDT
Lee Daniel Crocker writes:
> NB> In a sense you are betting against yourself when you decide
> > how to plan your life in view of your estimates of how long our
> > species will survive.
>
> Precisely; which is why you are not an acceptable random sample.
> If we are betting a short-lived civilization against a long-
> lived one, then we must offer the bet to a random sample of ALL
> the postulated possible civilizations, not just the one at hand.
I rather think one should consider oneself randomly sampled from the
set of *actual* civilizations, not the set of all possible ones. (I
have explained my reasons for this in the Robin-thread and also in my
"Investigations"-paper.)
_____________________________________________________
Nick Bostrom
Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method
London School of Economics
http://www.hedweb.com/nickb n.bostrom@lse.ac.uk
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