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Anthropic bias doesn't explain anything. It just says that you can't use your own existence as evidence of something. Because if you didn't exist, you wouldn't
by Houshalter 9y ago
Anthropic bias doesn't explain anything. It just says that you can't use your own existence as evidence of something. Because if you didn't exist, you wouldn't be able to make the opposite argument. It's basically just a wider application of survivorship bias. It works whether or not there are actually other universes (although the existence of other universes definitely makes it more intuitive to understand.)
- EGreg 9y agoBy itself that may be true. As they say, "painting the target around the arrow" proves nothing. But what if the target was there before? Then you have to explain how the arrow hit it so perfectly. There is a difference. The difference is, is there anything special about the target's placement? One can argue that alternative universes where soups of particles didn't give rise to life are all uninteresting. You can of course say that life is needed to make the judgment for what is interesting. But are you sure there is no sense in which the target can be said to have been painted before the arrow was fired? It all rests on that.