Yes. I am a random animal within the set of animals. I am also a random human, a random American, a random anthropics enthusiast, a random person on the EA forum, a random non-binary person, a random Jewish person… etc
When considering different problems I experience different forms of selection effects in different ways. For example, Insofar as I am Jewish I am more likely to exist in a world where the nazis lost ww2.
I am unsure how these different categories interact. I imagine that I am more likely to live in a world with more humans, but fewer total animals than I am to live in a world with more animals but fewer humans. I take any category to be a legitimate starting point and am unsure how to weigh them against each other.
The fact that I am not an ant doesn’t undermine it because I know that I am human. Humans will always be humans, and so have a tendency to discover themselves to be humans. This selection effect is even more extreme than the tendency for humans to find themselves in worlds without a nuclear war.
I could not be anything but what I am, as then I would not be myself. A reference class of just me is however not useful. So to do anthropic reasoning I conceive of myself as one of a set to which I belong and consider how general observation biases within that set might be misleading me.
In the fine-tuned planet case the fact that Animals couldn’t have occurred on a planet without liquid water is useful. The various contingencies around the seeming fine-tuning of the earth are explained by my being an animal. I am where animals, and by extension me, could exist.
“I am randomly selected from all animals” I don’t endorse this claim. It implies that my essence is prior to my existence, and I disagree with this assumption. I do believe I was once a soul placed into a random body within a set.
My essence follows from my existence, if I was different I would be someone else. I do stand by the claim, “I can reason as if I am randomly selected from all animals” this is true for any set I am a part of, if you did select a random member of that set I am a possible result, some sets just give unintuitive results, but that’s simply because reasoning from a particular positionality only gives part of the picture.
Anthropic shadow only requires the later epistemic claim to be valid and is not dependent on the metaphysical claim.
I didn’t try to make any metaphysical claims. I just pointed on conditional probability: if someone is writing comments on LW, (s)he is (with very high probability) not an animal. Therefore LW-commentators are special non-random subset from all animals.
Do you regard animals as observers?
Yes. I am a random animal within the set of animals. I am also a random human, a random American, a random anthropics enthusiast, a random person on the EA forum, a random non-binary person, a random Jewish person… etc
When considering different problems I experience different forms of selection effects in different ways. For example, Insofar as I am Jewish I am more likely to exist in a world where the nazis lost ww2.
I am unsure how these different categories interact. I imagine that I am more likely to live in a world with more humans, but fewer total animals than I am to live in a world with more animals but fewer humans. I take any category to be a legitimate starting point and am unsure how to weigh them against each other.
If you were random animal, you will be an ant with 99.999999 probability. So either anthropic is totally wrong, or animals is wrong reference class.
The fact that I am not an ant doesn’t undermine it because I know that I am human. Humans will always be humans, and so have a tendency to discover themselves to be humans. This selection effect is even more extreme than the tendency for humans to find themselves in worlds without a nuclear war.
I could not be anything but what I am, as then I would not be myself. A reference class of just me is however not useful. So to do anthropic reasoning I conceive of myself as one of a set to which I belong and consider how general observation biases within that set might be misleading me.
In the fine-tuned planet case the fact that Animals couldn’t have occurred on a planet without liquid water is useful. The various contingencies around the seeming fine-tuning of the earth are explained by my being an animal. I am where animals, and by extension me, could exist.
I think that here are presented two different conjectures:
“I am animal”—therefore liquid water on the planets etc.
“I am randomly selected from all animals”.
The first is true and the second is false.
“I am randomly selected from all animals” I don’t endorse this claim. It implies that my essence is prior to my existence, and I disagree with this assumption. I do believe I was once a soul placed into a random body within a set.
My essence follows from my existence, if I was different I would be someone else. I do stand by the claim, “I can reason as if I am randomly selected from all animals” this is true for any set I am a part of, if you did select a random member of that set I am a possible result, some sets just give unintuitive results, but that’s simply because reasoning from a particular positionality only gives part of the picture.
Anthropic shadow only requires the later epistemic claim to be valid and is not dependent on the metaphysical claim.
I didn’t try to make any metaphysical claims. I just pointed on conditional probability: if someone is writing comments on LW, (s)he is (with very high probability) not an animal. Therefore LW-commentators are special non-random subset from all animals.