Hands and Cities

A number of people I know are excited about a type of fundamental prior known as the “Universal Distribution” (UD). In particular, they’re excited about using this prior to address questions about anthropics.  I discuss the application to anthropics in a later post. As a foundation for that post, though, I wanted to first lay… Continue reading On the Universal Distribution →

Previously in sequence: Part 1: Learning from the fact that you exist; Part 2: Telekinesis, reference classes, and other scandals; Part 3: An aside on betting in anthropics. This post is the last in a four-part sequence, explaining why I think that one prominent approach to anthropic reasoning (the “Self-Indication Assumption” or “SIA”) is better than… Continue reading SIA > SSA, part 4: In defense of the presumptuous philosopher →

Previously in sequence: Part 1: Learning from the fact that you exist; Part 2: Telekinesis, reference classes, and other scandals. This post is the third in a four-part sequence, explaining why I think that one prominent approach to anthropic reasoning (the “Self-Indication Assumption” or “SIA”) is better than another (the “Self-Sampling Assumption” or “SSA”). This part… Continue reading SIA > SSA, part 3: An aside on betting in anthropics →

Previously in sequence: SIA > SSA, part 1: Learning from the fact that you exist. This post is the second in a four-part series, explaining why I think that one prominent approach to anthropic reasoning (the “Self-Indication Assumption” or “SIA”) is better than another (the “Self-Sampling Assumption” or “SSA”). This part focuses on objections to… Continue reading SIA > SSA, part 2: Telekinesis, reference classes, and other scandals →

This post is the first in a four-part sequence explaining why I think that one prominent approach to anthropic reasoning is better than another. Consider: God’s extreme coin toss: You wake up alone in a white room. There’s a message written on the wall: “I, God, tossed a fair coin. If it came up heads,… Continue reading SIA > SSA, part 1: Learning from the fact that you exist →

I think that you can “control” events you have no causal interaction with, including events in the past, and that this is a wild and disorienting fact, with uncertain but possibly significant implications. This post attempts to impart such disorientation. My main example is a prisoner's dilemma between perfect deterministic software twins, exposed to the… Continue reading Can you control the past? →

Suppose that you aspire to promote the welfare of others in a roughly impartial way, at least in some parts of your life. This post examines a dilemma that such an aspiration creates, especially given subjectivism about meta-ethics. If you don’t use idealized preference-satisfaction as your theory of welfare, your "helping someone" often ends up… Continue reading In search of benevolence (or: what should you get Clippy for Christmas?) →

On a popular view about meta-ethics, what you should value is determined by what an idealized version of you would value. Call this view “idealizing subjectivism.”  Idealizing subjectivism has been something like my best-guess meta-ethics. And lots of people I know take it for granted. But I also feel nagged by various problems with it… Continue reading On the limits of idealized values →

I. I wasn't raised in a religious household, but I got interested in Buddhism at the end of high school, and in Christianity and a number of other traditions, early in college. Those were the days of the New Atheists, and of intricate wrangling over theistic apologetics. And I did some of that. I went,… Continue reading Problems of evil →

(Content warning: violence, spoilers for King Lear) "With this and that I tried to keep the bucket together, and then the bottom fell out. Where water does not collect, the moon does not dwell." -- Chiyono This post re-imagines Richard Dawkins's description of evolution, with genes not as selfish agents, but as passive, innocent patterns, that don't want… Continue reading The innocent gene →