Comments on: More Anthropic Activity?

By: Valeria Wardwell

Valeria Wardwell — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 19:08:19 +0000

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By: Neosis

Neosis — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 12:53:17 +0000

To the (silly) Anthropic Principle, I reply simply:

“Is it really so surprising that we find ourselves in a universe that allows life, on a planet that is suitable for life?

For, in universes that don’t allow life, and on planets not suitable for life… we would not have selves to find.”

It’s really that simple. Anyone who doesn’t get it is just wasting my time, frankly. Even if god does exist, this anthropic nonsense is a terrible argument for its existence, and I think I’ve made that clear.

http://zenithnoesis.wordpress.com/2010/05/16/anthropic-nonsense/

By: mitchell porter

mitchell porter — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 04:06:48 +0000

“Can anyone say something about why they think the Doomsday Argument is false?”

I can’t, because I don’t think it’s false.

What perplexes me, from the anthropic perspective, is why I should be a conscious being at all, when unconscious ones are so much more numerous. (The argument that “if I wasn’t conscious, I wouldn’t be asking the question” does not answer the question.)

By: Los incidentes del LHC y la inmortalidad cuántica « La Singularidad Desnuda

Los incidentes del LHC y la inmortalidad cuántica « La Singularidad Desnuda — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 20:13:27 +0000

[...] todo esto a cuento de un comentario en Accelerating Future acerca de los nuevos problemas detectados en el LHC y que una vez más provocan un retraso en su [...]

By: mjgeddes

mjgeddes — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 03:22:18 +0000

To me the anthropic arguments send out a big red flashing siren ‘BLACK SWAN WARNING!’ – here’s something that’s not really understood involving intricate aspects of probability theory and multiverse theory.

You SIAI folks should worry that a huge black swan is lurking just waiting to pop out like a fuckn’ jack-in-the-box, and the solution to anthropic puzzles could demolish the current understanding of Bayes, the multiverse and AI theory.

I read on ‘Less Wrong’ Eliezer talking about ‘platonic people space’ which caused me to shake my head sadly – there aren’t any people in ‘platonic space’ – and therein I think lies the big problem with anthropic arguments – there’s a possible confusion of levels of abstraction , which assumes that there’s people in a platonic space somewhere just waiting to pop out. And the multiverse theory could hinge on this same problem.

Like I’ve suggested on ‘Overcoming Bias’, what if reductionism is false and reality is actually stratified into different level of abstraction? See the Bohm interpretation of QM for instance:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohm_interpretation

Beware the black swan of anthropics!