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Practical Guide to Anthropics

Jul 08, 2021 by Stuart_Armstrong

How to do anthropics simply and practically.

If there are no issues of exact copies, or advanced decision theory, and the questions you're asking aren't weird, then use SIA. And by "use SIA", I mean "ignore the definition of SIA, and just do a conventional Bayesian update on your own existence". Infinite universes won't be a problem (any more than they are with conventional probabilities). And this might not increase your expected population by much.

11Anthropic decision theory for self-locating beliefs
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11Anthropics: different probabilities, different questions
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12SIA is basically just Bayesian updating on existence
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13Non-poisonous cake: anthropic updates are normal
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7Anthropics in infinite universes
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19The SIA population update can be surprisingly small
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9Anthropics and Fermi: grabby, visible, zoo-keeping, and early aliens
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8Practical anthropics summary
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