4 ms·

There's no paradox here. When a lottery is drawn, someone has to win it and be left with the question "what are the odds?". Well, the odds that there will be a

There's no paradox here. When a lottery is drawn, someone has to win it and be left with the question "what are the odds?". Well, the odds that there will be a lottery winner in a position to ask that question is 1.

kkoncevicius 6y ago
If someone wins a lottery we can then say "what are the chances of this specific person winning - they are very low" - that would be Texas sharpshooter fallacy, because the chance of _some_ person winning somewhere is high, we simply drew a target around the winner and restated the question. But this is not what is happening. What is happening is more like you finding three tickets under your rug in the morning, checking the numbers and finding out that you won jackpots in all three, and then choosing to believe that they are winner tickets by chance (believing in consciousness is everywhere) as opposed to someone planting them there (only humans are conscious or some other similar explanation). The key difference between the two is that in the second case there are no multiple possibilities - it's about one person - you, you either win or loose, so we cannot select "winners" after the fact in this case.
- hntrader 6y ago
  I think you're making a good point, but anthropic reasoning is hard so I'm still mulling it over. What you're saying is that panpsychism implies a lower probability of you ending up as you, because you may have ended up as a conscious bacteria instead. I'm going to tentatively disagree with that because the counterfactual of you ending up as a bacteria instead of a human is impossible, and therefore it doesn't factor into the probability estimates. Whether a bacteria can be conscious is besides the point. I may be committing some kind of Monty Hall fallacy, but don't currently think so. The Veil of Ignorance is false if we're talking about physical reality.
  - kkoncevicius 6y ago
    The argument I am pondering over here is very similar to the one about human population, you might have heard about it, it goes something like this: "human population is now likely highest it will ever be and will be drastically reduced in the future, because if we were to be born as any human randomly we would likely be born during a period where there are highest number of people alive". Sadly I don't remember the name of it, but this argument about consciousness is in the same fashion. Except the odds are a _lot_ more surprising when compared with the population argument.
    - hntrader 6y ago
      It's the Doomsday Argument and I can see how you're applying the same logic. Doesn't this logic also imply that solipsism is true? 1 observer is less than 7 billion observers and therefore more likely under the logic of the Doomsday argument.
      - kkoncevicius 6y ago
        Thank you for naming it, now I can see if there are criticism of the doomsday argument that also apply. And I do see how this can lead to solipsism. In particular when combined with "Self-Indication Assumption: The possibility of not existing at all" [1] . Solipsism would be a theory that explains both - the doomsday original argument and this criticism. But I haven't thought much about that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument#Self-Indication_Assumption:_The_possibility_of_not_existing_at_all https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument#Self-Indicat...

kkoncevicius 6y ago

If someone wins a lottery we can then say "what are the chances of this specific person winning - they are very low" - that would be Texas sharpshooter fallacy, because the chance of _some_ person winning somewhere is high, we simply drew a target around the winner and restated the question. But this is not what is happening. What is happening is more like you finding three tickets under your rug in the morning, checking the numbers and finding out that you won jackpots in all three, and then choosing to believe that they are winner tickets by chance (believing in consciousness is everywhere) as opposed to someone planting them there (only humans are conscious or some other similar explanation). The key difference between the two is that in the second case there are no multiple possibilities - it's about one person - you, you either win or loose, so we cannot select "winners" after the fact in this case.

hntrader 6y ago
I think you're making a good point, but anthropic reasoning is hard so I'm still mulling it over. What you're saying is that panpsychism implies a lower probability of you ending up as you, because you may have ended up as a conscious bacteria instead. I'm going to tentatively disagree with that because the counterfactual of you ending up as a bacteria instead of a human is impossible, and therefore it doesn't factor into the probability estimates. Whether a bacteria can be conscious is besides the point. I may be committing some kind of Monty Hall fallacy, but don't currently think so. The Veil of Ignorance is false if we're talking about physical reality.
- kkoncevicius 6y ago
  The argument I am pondering over here is very similar to the one about human population, you might have heard about it, it goes something like this: "human population is now likely highest it will ever be and will be drastically reduced in the future, because if we were to be born as any human randomly we would likely be born during a period where there are highest number of people alive". Sadly I don't remember the name of it, but this argument about consciousness is in the same fashion. Except the odds are a _lot_ more surprising when compared with the population argument.
  - hntrader 6y ago
    It's the Doomsday Argument and I can see how you're applying the same logic. Doesn't this logic also imply that solipsism is true? 1 observer is less than 7 billion observers and therefore more likely under the logic of the Doomsday argument.
    - kkoncevicius 6y ago
      Thank you for naming it, now I can see if there are criticism of the doomsday argument that also apply. And I do see how this can lead to solipsism. In particular when combined with "Self-Indication Assumption: The possibility of not existing at all" [1] . Solipsism would be a theory that explains both - the doomsday original argument and this criticism. But I haven't thought much about that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument#Self-Indication_Assumption:_The_possibility_of_not_existing_at_all https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument#Self-Indicat...