Related papers: Puzzles of Anthropic Reasoning Resolved Using Full…
This paper uses anthropic reasoning to argue for a reduced likelihood that superintelligent AI will come into existence in the future. To make this argument, a new principle is introduced: the Super-Strong Self-Sampling Assumption (SSSSA),…
This paper uses anthropic reasoning to argue for the Non-Arbitrary Existence Hypothesis (NAEH). Nick Bostrom's Self-Sampling Assumption (SSA) combined with NAEH is compared against SSA without such an assumption and also SSA with the…
A number of problems in physics, mathematics, and philosophy involve observers in given situations which lead to debates about whether observer-specific information should affect the probability for some outcome or hypothesis. Our purpose…
Discarding undesirable measurement results in Bell experiments opens the detection loophole that prevents a conclusive demonstration of nonlocality. As closing the detection loophole represents a major technical challenge for many practical…
This paper sets out to resolve how agents ought to act in the Sleeping Beauty problem and various related anthropic (self-locating belief) problems, not through the calculation of anthropic probabilities, but through finding the correct…
Anthropic reasoning often begins with the premise that we should expect to find ourselves typical among all intelligent observers. However, in the infinite universe predicted by inflation, there are some civilizations which have spread…
Anthropic reasoning is a critical tool to understand probabilities, especially in a large universe or multiverse. According to anthropic reasoning, we should consider ourselves typical among members of a reference class that must include…
The way a rational agent changes her belief in certain propositions/hypotheses in the light of new evidence lies at the heart of Bayesian inference. The basic natural assumption, as summarized in van Fraassen's Reflection Principle…
Ambitious civilizations that expand for resources at an intergalactic scale could be observable from a cosmological distance, but how likely is one to be visible to us? The question comes down to estimating the appearance rate of such…
Whether the fate of our species can be forecast from its past has been the topic of considerable controversy. One refutation of the so-called Doomsday Argument is based on the premise that we are more likely to exist in a universe…
We propose an alternative anthropic probability for calculating the probabilities in eternal inflation. This anthropic probability follows naturally from the weak anthropic principle, and does not suffer the freak observer or the typicality…
In the recent article `Conflict between anthropic reasoning and observation'(gr-qc/0303070) Ken D. Olum, using some inflation-based ideas and the anthropic premise that we should be typical among all intelligent observers in the Universe,…
A central challenge in statistical inference is the presence of confounding variables that may distort observed associations between treatment and outcome. Conventional "causal" methods, grounded in assumptions such as ignorability, exclude…
In order for conversational AI systems to hold more natural and broad-ranging conversations, they will require much more commonsense, including the ability to identify unstated presumptions of their conversational partners. For example, in…
Given a conditional sentence "P=>Q" (if P then Q) and respective facts, four different types of inferences are observed in human reasoning. Affirming the antecedent (AA) (or modus ponens) reasons Q from P; affirming the consequent (AC)…
Automated grading systems can efficiently score short-answer responses, yet they often fail to indicate when a grading decision is uncertain or potentially contentious. We introduce semantic entropy, a measure of variability across multiple…
The Boolean satisfiability problem (SAT) is a well-known example of monotonic reasoning, of intense practical interest due to fast solvers, complemented by rigorous fine-grained complexity results. However, for non-monotonic reasoning,…
We introduce the Consistent Reasoning Paradox (CRP). Consistent reasoning, which lies at the core of human intelligence, is the ability to handle tasks that are equivalent, yet described by different sentences ('Tell me the time!' and 'What…
We revisit anthropic arguments purporting to explain the measured value of the cosmological constant. We argue that different ways of assigning probabilities to candidate universes lead to totally different anthropic predictions. As an…
Over the past two decades, considerable strides have been made in advancing neuroscientific techniques, yet challenges remain in attributing causality to observed associations. This review addresses a fundamental issue in observational…