Wei Dai wrote: > This experiment is not a "game", since the action of each participant only > affects his or her own payoff, and not the payoff of the other player. > Actually you can do this with just one participant, and maybe that will > make the paradoxical nature of anthropic reasoning clearer. > > Suppose the new experiment has two rounds. In each round the participant > will be given temporary amnesia so he can't tell which round he is in. In > round one he will have low measure (1/100 of normal). In round two he will > have normal measure. He is also told: > > If you push button 1, you will lose $9. > If you push button 2 and you are in round 1, you will win $10. > If you push button 2 and you are in round 2, you will lose $10. > > According to anthropic reasoning, the participant when faced with the > choices should think that he is much more likely to be in round 2, and > therefore push button 1 in both rounds, but obviously he would have been > better off pushing button 2 in both rounds.
I would conclude that it is inconsistent to say that there are two rounds and that in round one the participant has 1/100 of the measure of the second round. If it is certain that there will be two rounds then the measures must be equal. Saibal
