From: gts (gts_2000@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Apr 30 2003 - 08:16:32 MDT
Ramez Naam wrote:
> This is an interesting example, but can you think of one more
> realistic?
Yes, in fact I offered another one in a message to you in the other doomsday
thread that you started. Here it is again...
...The SSA does not itself seem unreasonable to me. It is defined thusly:
"Every observer should reason as if she were a random sample from the set of
all observers in their reference class."
Put simply, why should you assume that your observation of any particular
phenomenon should be different from anyone else's? For example when you do a
statistical test on a coin to determine if the coin is fair, you assume that
your observation of the coin's flips is a random sample of coin flip
observations taken from the population of all possible coin flip
observations of that coin that might be taken by all possible humans; i.e.,
you assume that your observations are a random sample from the set of all
observers in your reference class with regard to that coin, where your
reference class is "humans" or "intelligent beings." If you don't make that
assumption then you cannot say that your analysis of the coin is meaningful
to other humans.
We cannot speak meaningfully to one another about probabilities unless we
all assume that our observations are not unique to our individual
identities. In other words, we must assume your observed sequence of
coin-flips would have been just as likely to have been observed by me or by
anyone else who might have performed the same test on the same coin at the
same time. This is to say, as per the SSA, that we should each reason as if
we are random samples from the set of all observers in our reference class.
-gts
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