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.
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.