>From: Russell Standish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: Anthropic Principle
>Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2001 09:39:13 +1100 (EST)
>
>Mind mind was ticking over a comment made by Wei Dai in his last
>post. I had a thought, that I'll share with this group, even though it
>might be completely crazy:
>
>What if there were an absolute measure that favours increased
>complexity of the mind (ie more complex minds are more likely), along
>the lines Wei Dai suggested in the last post. Also, it seems likely
>that at a certain level of complexity, minds become self reflective
>(observe themeselves). By my observer-dependent measure arguments,
>each self-reflective mind (regardless of complexity) will observe a
>universe, containing a mind that is just complex enough for
>self-reflection.
>
>This would neatly explain why we're not ants (minds are too simple),
>and why we're not superhumans (we may be, but we'll only observe
>minimal complexity self-reflective minds).
>
>Crazy perhaps, but hopefully food for thought.
Aha! You've hit on something similar to my own pet TOE, which is that the
global measure on observer-moments can somehow be derived from a sort of
"theory of the anthropic principle" which would have to blend in with some
type of formal theory of consciousness, a bit like what the philosopher
David Chalmers proposes. Here was a post I wrote on this in September:
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m3143.html
A section from this post:
>I'm not sure it's possible to take a third-person perspective on the
>self-sampling assumption. For one thing, the reasoning only works if I
>assume *my* observer-moment is randomly selected--I can't use anyone else's
>or I may get incorrect results, as if I reasoned from Adam and Eve's point
>of view in the doomsday argument. Then there is what Nick Bostrom calls the
>"problem of the reference class," and I think there is a very good case to
>be made that the problem can only be solved by making reference to some
>sort of objective measure of the "consciousness level" of a particular
>observer-moment. For example, suppose I find that I was created as one of
>two "batches" of humans, the first batch containing 950 members and the
>second containing only 50. One batch is all-male and the other is
>all-female, and I know that which batch is which sex was determined by a
>coinflip, so that a third-person observer would say there is a 50% chance
>that the large batch is the male batch. However, since I observe myself to
>be a male, I use the self-sampling assumption to reason that there is
>actually a 95% chance that the large batch was all-male, simply because I'm
>assuming that I'm as likely to be any human as any other, and 95% of the
>humans were members of the large batch.
>
>All right so far. But suppose I now find out that one of the two batches
>was genetically engineered to lack a brain, having no consciousness
>whatsoever? Or, if you prefer, suppose that one batch is not made of real
>humans at all, but just marble statues of them. Can I still assume I am as
>likely to be any individual as any other? I don't think so--I think some
>kind of "anthropic principle" must come into play here, guaranteeing that I
>will be a conscious individual rather than an unconscious one. So, even if
>the small-batch was the all-male one, I would still be guaranteed to find
>myself a male, simply because all the "females" in this experiment are
>going to totally lack consciousness. It's just the same as how I can't
>assume I'm "randomly sampled" from the set of all computations being
>implemented in the universe, because the vast majority of computations,
>associated with things like the random collisions of gas molecules in a
>nebula, will not lead to any high-level conscious experiences...only the
>very rare ones associated with biological brains which have evolved on
>planets with just the right conditions will have these sorts of experiences
>(or so I'd assume, anyway). Again, the anthropic principle must be taken
>into account.
>
>I think this should be a matter of degree, rather than an all-or-nothing
>affair. I think other animals, at least other mammals and birds, almost
>certainly have some kind of high-level conscious experience, so there is
>"something it is like" to be them, but I don't think I should reason as if
>I was randomly sampled from the set of all these animals, either. Indeed, I
>don't think it's just a lucky break that I find myself to be a member of
>what is probably the most intelligent species that has ever existed on
>planet earth, despite the fact that the number of animals who have ever
>lived probably vastly outweighs the number of homo sapiens who have ever
>lived. I think some sort of graded anthropic principle is likely to be
>responsible here...the usual self-sampling assumption perhaps needs to be
>replaced by some kind of weighted self-sampling assumption, with the
>"weights" on an obs
