Thank you for the comment Ariel! Iām finding it pretty surreal learning about how much thinking has actually been done on the topic after some more digging. You are right that this entire post requires me to have been born for the probabilities to be the same as the number of births of different species, which is not necessarily true, since I might have also not been born at all.
I agree that any argument made by someone receiving the letter is not good evidence of the lottery being rigged, since they were always going to say that. Only winners will know that the lottery existed in the first place, and only they will tell you how it is likely to be rigged. So I agree that you hearing this argument from me should not be evidence of anything. By design, this seems like an argument that cannot convince another person. Is that true for a person arguing about their own life as well? It is my own sentience that makes me think I played the lottery (and could have lost, e.g. been a chicken), but that is simply an intuition I have. You might or might not have the same intuition.
I guess you could make the argument that there are many other lotteries I never knew I was part of to begin with. If there were a billion different lotteries played at birth, on average I would be expected to win a lottery, and I guess I simply ended up winning the sentience one. This would invalidate my sentience argumentbecause of the filter.
Thank you for the comment Ariel! Iām finding it pretty surreal learning about how much thinking has actually been done on the topic after some more digging. You are right that this entire post requires me to have been born for the probabilities to be the same as the number of births of different species, which is not necessarily true, since I might have also not been born at all.
I agree that any argument made by someone receiving the letter is not good evidence of the lottery being rigged, since they were always going to say that. Only winners will know that the lottery existed in the first place, and only they will tell you how it is likely to be rigged. So I agree that you hearing this argument from me should not be evidence of anything. By design, this seems like an argument that cannot convince another person. Is that true for a person arguing about their own life as well? It is my own sentience that makes me think I played the lottery (and could have lost, e.g. been a chicken), but that is simply an intuition I have. You might or might not have the same intuition.
I guess you could make the argument that there are many other lotteries I never knew I was part of to begin with. If there were a billion different lotteries played at birth, on average I would be expected to win a lottery, and I guess I simply ended up winning the sentience one. This would invalidate my sentience argument because of the filter.