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"Can we decide if we're living in the better or the worse of the two possible universes? Per the article, we can!" No, per the article you'll have a marginally
by dllthomas 11y ago
"Can we decide if we're living in the better or the worse of the two possible universes? Per the article, we can!"
No, per the article you'll have a marginally better chance than picking without assessing at all. I don't think your framing shows anything at all about whether that's sense or nonsense.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- logicallee 11y ago(edited) In my analogy, assessing the universe numerically = opening the envelope to see what number is inside. I think it's a pretty close analogy, and obviously leads to an absurd, nonsensical result: that we can learn something about whether we 'probably' (>50%) are in the better universe, without knowing anything about the value of the other one.
- dllthomas 11y agoI still don't see why your analogy does anything but introduce additional complication. To me, the result appears no more nonsensical than in the original formulation - where it appears correct. So long as X and Y are chosen in advance - and independently - of my guessing, if I draw my reference R from any continuous distribution, there is some nonzero chance that it will fall between X and Y, letting me distinguish them in that case.
- logicallee 11y agoyou have no idea what possible values X and Y can have. It's like an alternative universe, or guessing a number first and then finding a function to numerically evaluate the universe whose range you don't know in advance. I find it nonsensical that this can yield any information.