3 ms·

>>No. That you are in a cubicle is a given fact, so the probability that you find yourself in a cubicle is unconditionally 1. But it's not 1 that you would be

>>No. That you are in a cubicle is a given fact, so the probability that you find yourself in a cubicle is unconditionally 1. But it's not 1 that you would be in a cubicle at all. The paradox disappears if the problem was formulated like this: "God shuffles DNA and there is 0.0000000000001 chances tha it shuffles up you and he does that for every cuebicle". Or: "God create you first, then flips a coin and put you at random in one of the created cubicles". Formulation of the problem should mention which one is it. If it doesn't we are back to guessing what God does (similarly to 2 envelope problem which comes down to guessing what the sponsor's preferences for amounts are). As there are infinitely many ways God could decide to create humans in cubicles you can't answer that without giving some guess (priori) for probability distribution over those choices.

spacehome 12y ago
There are only finitely many ways to arrange matter in a finite volume under a finite temperature. If it's safe to assume that anything we could classify as "human" will fit inside a sphere of radius 1 light-year and has a temperature under 10^20 K, there are finitely many humans.
- bluecalm 12y ago
  Yeah but it's not given that God chooses at random who is going to cubicle. He might have for example created you first and then put you in a cubicle regardless if it's 100 of them or 10. I agree with your resolution of that paradox though. It's reasonable to assume - having no information about the process - that God creates humans randomly and it's 10x more likely that you are created in a world with 100 cubicles than in a world in 10 cubicles. In my mind there is no paradox at all there.
otakucode 12y ago
And I don't understand why we ignore that human beings created the cubicles and there is no random god involved in any of it. Whether there is a human in the cubicle or not is entirely a result of physical processes. Any statement about probability is nothing but an explanation of our ignorance. Yeah, we might not be capable of knowing the totality of physical history of all the people who build the cubicles and where they are now and such... so what? That says nothing about the history of their species.

spacehome 12y ago

There are only finitely many ways to arrange matter in a finite volume under a finite temperature. If it's safe to assume that anything we could classify as "human" will fit inside a sphere of radius 1 light-year and has a temperature under 10^20 K, there are finitely many humans.

bluecalm 12y ago
Yeah but it's not given that God chooses at random who is going to cubicle. He might have for example created you first and then put you in a cubicle regardless if it's 100 of them or 10. I agree with your resolution of that paradox though. It's reasonable to assume - having no information about the process - that God creates humans randomly and it's 10x more likely that you are created in a world with 100 cubicles than in a world in 10 cubicles. In my mind there is no paradox at all there.

otakucode 12y ago

And I don't understand why we ignore that human beings created the cubicles and there is no random god involved in any of it. Whether there is a human in the cubicle or not is entirely a result of physical processes. Any statement about probability is nothing but an explanation of our ignorance. Yeah, we might not be capable of knowing the totality of physical history of all the people who build the cubicles and where they are now and such... so what? That says nothing about the history of their species.