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Comment by whack | Hacker News Reader

Here's a better analogy. Joe has OCD. Every morning, he rolls a d100, and if it comes up 1, he hosts a board-game party that night.

On day XX/YY/ZZZZ, Joe hosts a board-game party and a bunch of people show up. During the course of the party, Joe reveals to everyone his d100 policy.

Tim asks him what his die-roll this morning was. Joe tells Tim that he rolled a 1. Tim exclaims "The only reason we're here is because you rolled a 1! How did this incredible piece of luck come to pass?"

Adam responds "There's nothing incredible about what happened. If Joe hadn't rolled a 1 today, we wouldn't be here. We would never have this discussion, or have it on some other day when he does roll a 1."

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To extend this even further...

~This~ morning Joe rolled a dice, and it came up 1, so he hosted a board-game party.

During the party Joe hints that the die he rolls may be very large, but stops short of outright saying so.

Joe also refuses to say whether he rolls the die every morning, or if it was just this morning.

The interesting questions are:

How big is the die?

How often is it rolled?

Does Joe do anything at all if he rolls almost anything other than a 1, or does he just lie in bed?

If the very large die is only rolled once, and all non-1s are very boring, then it is remarkable that we're here.

"Does Joe do anything at all if he rolls almost anything other than a 1, or does he just lie in bed? If the very large die is only rolled once, and all non-1s are very boring, then it is remarkable that we're here."

That's a very interesting point you raised, and I was thinking about this as well. If the universe only "exists once", and life is very unlikely but it still came to be, then it does seem remarkable.

However, this is based on the presumption that life is non-boring, and all other potential universes devoid of life are boring. This seems like a very subjective presumption. Clearly we are biased towards thinking that our own existence, or the similar existence of "life" is special. But a skeptic would claim that from a purely scientific perspective, there's no reason to believe that a universe without life is any more boring than our universe.

Well, but there is something fundamentally and essentially special about conscious minds. A universe that is complete unperceived is, first of all, harder to even imagine than it first appears and, second, would be neither boring nor interesting, since both of those words, and all other assessments, only have meaning within the context of conscious perception. So I would affirm the presumption that "life", in the sense of the existence of conscious minds, is non-boring and universes devoid of life are either boring, or inconceivable.

Spoken like a conscious mind

Life aside, in a slightly different universe, it's unclear whether space or chemistry or atoms would even be possible: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_Universe

To quote neutral milk hotel, "how strange it is to be anything at all"

Ah, thanks. That's helpful. So would you say that the appeal of the Anthropic principle depends on the multiverse theory (or something similar): the idea that there are an infinite number—or a great many, anyway—of "die rolls", an infinite number of attempts?

Yes. Although you don't need an infinite number of universes. A very large number of years and a very large number of stars will do.

e.g Q: out of billions of stars what is the chance that this discussion takes place at a planet that can support intelligent life?

A: high

Yes, though there is an important difference between the multiverse approach and the multi-star/multi-year approach. When we imagine the state of affairs in which many universes are created with random parameters, we tend to give those many universes great variety, and we require each one of them (in our imaginations) to be "fruitful" at least in producing a universe. But it's not clear that the mere presence of lots of years (as many as you like) or stars (as many as you like) are fruitful in the same way. To put it back in terms of Joe the die roller, it's as if Joe wakes up most mornings and just lies in bed all day, not rolling the die. Occasionally—one day in a billion—he rolls the die, and it's a trillion-sided die, say. But I suppose the point is the same: the Anthropic principle says that however unlikely conscious minds are, if they do appear (at whatever odds), then... well I'm not sure where to go from there. Then these minds will ask questions about their existence? But that doesn't seem a very remarkable insight.

I think the anthropic principle is a response to the claim that that is a remarkable insight.

The anthropic principle goes the other way. It says that if the questions about existence are being asked, then we don't need further explanation of the lucky die roll.

I'm curious what relevance Joe's OCD has to the story?

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