From: Robin Hanson (hanson@econ.berkeley.edu)
Date: Mon Aug 31 1998 - 12:52:24 MDT
Nick B. writes:
>I think Robins' position can be characterized as follows: He accepts
>what I call the self-indication axiom (SIA) and he thinks that also
>non-observers should be included in the reference class.
I didn't address this second issue in my summary, since I didn't think
it central. But since Nick devotes most of his summary to this issue,
let me say a few words about it.
The most interesting thing I found in the doomsday argument was the
apparent suggestion that we should extend our fundamental state space
descriptions to include who we turned out to be in history. While I'm
not convinced we need to do this, I tried to explore the idea.
The first order of business here, it seemed to me, was to seek a more
physics-oriented approach to this. I want our descriptions of
fundamental states to be in terms of things the universe cares about,
and not directly in terms abstract features like intelligence.
I tried to construct such an approach, and I admit it may not be
completely satisfactory. If a satisfactory approach cannot be found,
however, I would rather abandon the entire enterprise of extending
standard state desciptions.
Let me emphasize in conclusion that I am not against anthropic reasoning
and in fact have a paper which makes central use of it. The doomsday
argument goes well beyond anthropic reasoning, and one can reject it
without rejecting anthropic reasoning.
Robin Hanson
hanson@econ.berkeley.edu http://hanson.berkeley.edu/
RWJF Health Policy Scholar, Sch. of Public Health 510-643-1884
140 Warren Hall, UC Berkeley, CA 94720-7360 FAX: 510-643-8614
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