Epistemic status: this is a quick reaction to the latest 80k Hours podcast episode with Joe Carlsmith. This has been my first encounter with the anthropogenic principle. I haven’t read up on this afterwards, so my argument might be easily debunked or the statement in question might be a misrepresentation of the thought experiment.
In the 80,000 hours podcast episode number 152 featuring Joe Carlsmith, Rob Wiblin states that if one thinks that Sleeping Beauty should put 2⁄3 credence on heads (or whatever option leads to the outcome of being waken up twice, and having the memory of the first awakening erased), this creates a problematic conclusion: An event which creates more observers—such as Sleeping Beauty, who observes the awakening twice in the Heads scenario—would thus be more likely.
However, it seems to me like this is a misguided interpretation of the view. In fact, putting 2⁄3 credence on Heads doesn’t make this more likely, but is rather just the better strategy for the observer who has to guess to which group of observers they belong.
About the Sleeping Beauty Problem.
Epistemic status: this is a quick reaction to the latest 80k Hours podcast episode with Joe Carlsmith. This has been my first encounter with the anthropogenic principle. I haven’t read up on this afterwards, so my argument might be easily debunked or the statement in question might be a misrepresentation of the thought experiment.
In the 80,000 hours podcast episode number 152 featuring Joe Carlsmith, Rob Wiblin states that if one thinks that Sleeping Beauty should put 2⁄3 credence on heads (or whatever option leads to the outcome of being waken up twice, and having the memory of the first awakening erased), this creates a problematic conclusion: An event which creates more observers—such as Sleeping Beauty, who observes the awakening twice in the Heads scenario—would thus be more likely.
However, it seems to me like this is a misguided interpretation of the view. In fact, putting 2⁄3 credence on Heads doesn’t make this more likely, but is rather just the better strategy for the observer who has to guess to which group of observers they belong.