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www.lesswrong.com | ||
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philpapers.org
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| | | | | [AI summary] The provided text is a collection of various academic and philosophical works, including journal articles, essays, and book preprints, covering topics such as cosmology, the philosophy of science, the anthropic principle, and the fine-tuning argument. It includes discussions on the structure of the universe, the nature of time, and the role of consciousness in science. There are also mentions of specific authors and their contributions to these fields, as well as some critiques of Bayesian reasoning and anthropic arguments. The text also contains some personal reflections and opinions on current scientific and philosophical debates. | |
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www.greaterwrong.com
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| | | | | Nick Bostrom's Self Sampling Assumption (SSA) says that when accounting for indexical information, one should reason as if one were a random sample from the set of all observer's in one's reference class. As an example of the scientific usefulness of anthropic reasoning, Bostrom shows how the SSA rules out a particular cosmological model suggested by Boltzmann. Boltzmann was trying to construct a model that is symmetric under time reversal, but still accounts for the pervasive temporal asymmetry we observe. The idea is that the universe is eternal and, at most times and places, at thermodynamic equilibrium. Occasionally, there will be chance fluctuations away from equilibrium, creating pockets of low entropy. Life can only develop in these low entropy pocket... | |
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www.greaterwrong.com
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| | | | | Followup to: Anthropic Reasoning in UDT by Wei Dai Suppose that I flip a logical coin - e.g. look at some binary digit of pi unknown to either of us - and depending on the result, either create a billion of you in green rooms and one of you in a red room if the coin came up 1; or, if the coin came up 0, create one of you in a green room and a billion of you in red rooms. You go to sleep at the start of the experiment, and wake up in a red room. Do you reason that the coin very probably came up 0? Thinking, perhaps: "If the coin came up 1, there'd be a billion of me in green rooms and only one of me in a red room, and in that case, it'd be very surprising that I found myself in a red room." | |
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www.collectspace.com
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| | | Nearly two dozen of Neil Armstrong's Apollo 11 mementos are included in a new display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. | ||
