“However, one could reason as follows. Suppose that the person is cheating. Well then you know that there’s only one room, such that if the cheating hypothesis is correct, cheating would occur in this room. In contrast, if the big casino hypothesis is true, it’s unlikely that this person would be cheating in this room. So the cheating hypothesis gets a big boost.”
I did not follow this.
The Bostrom selection effect point also seems to beg the question. Yea, being outside a casino and being alerted when there are double 6s seems to provide evidence of several rolls, but only because you have a background view about the probability of getting double sixes. We are entitled to no analogous view in the case of getting our particular constants. Almost all the work of the argument seems to be done by the indifference principle assigning equal credence to each possibility. That’s extremely dubious for the usual reasons and also because probabilities with infinities get messy and unworkable, especially in the fine-tuning literature.
I get the sense that I am probably missing something here, but I’m not seeing what it is. Clarifying your casino thought experiment might help, as would clarifying the extent of the argument’s reliance on indifference reasoning.
The point is that in cases where there's a selection effect, it's reasonable to infer a bigger sample from the presence of some particular instance of the sample. If I'll only know about my existence if I'm created, then thinking many got created doesn't commit the inverse gambler's fallacy/
In the casino case, we have reason to assign every dice roll and equal probability. I see no reason that we should do the same with every set of constants in the universe. On what basis can we make such a judgment? In the casino case, it’s straightforward, well-behaved physical probability calculations. In the multiverse case, we are far from such a scenario.
I don’t know whether this issue has any upshot for anthropics, because I suppose we can calculate physical probabilities of agents like us existing in a way that’s impossible with nomologically necessary constants. So maybe the multiverse stuff doesn’t bear on this issue after all?
I suspect that my previous comment about begging the question is wrong. Iirc White himself wants to grant that the odds of getting our constants are low. So I guess the indifference issue is just an independent point
I think White is just wrong for reasons I give here https://benthams.substack.com/p/the-multiverse-and-inverse-gamblers
“However, one could reason as follows. Suppose that the person is cheating. Well then you know that there’s only one room, such that if the cheating hypothesis is correct, cheating would occur in this room. In contrast, if the big casino hypothesis is true, it’s unlikely that this person would be cheating in this room. So the cheating hypothesis gets a big boost.”
I did not follow this.
The Bostrom selection effect point also seems to beg the question. Yea, being outside a casino and being alerted when there are double 6s seems to provide evidence of several rolls, but only because you have a background view about the probability of getting double sixes. We are entitled to no analogous view in the case of getting our particular constants. Almost all the work of the argument seems to be done by the indifference principle assigning equal credence to each possibility. That’s extremely dubious for the usual reasons and also because probabilities with infinities get messy and unworkable, especially in the fine-tuning literature.
I get the sense that I am probably missing something here, but I’m not seeing what it is. Clarifying your casino thought experiment might help, as would clarifying the extent of the argument’s reliance on indifference reasoning.
The point is that in cases where there's a selection effect, it's reasonable to infer a bigger sample from the presence of some particular instance of the sample. If I'll only know about my existence if I'm created, then thinking many got created doesn't commit the inverse gambler's fallacy/
That part I gathered. But doesn’t that just assume a whole bunch of background indifference indifference stuff?
What background indifference stuff that you reject does it accept?
In the casino case, we have reason to assign every dice roll and equal probability. I see no reason that we should do the same with every set of constants in the universe. On what basis can we make such a judgment? In the casino case, it’s straightforward, well-behaved physical probability calculations. In the multiverse case, we are far from such a scenario.
I don’t know whether this issue has any upshot for anthropics, because I suppose we can calculate physical probabilities of agents like us existing in a way that’s impossible with nomologically necessary constants. So maybe the multiverse stuff doesn’t bear on this issue after all?
I suspect that my previous comment about begging the question is wrong. Iirc White himself wants to grant that the odds of getting our constants are low. So I guess the indifference issue is just an independent point