[ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets

[Anders Sandberg]

On 2013-11-06 14:30, Eugen Leitl wrote:
> There is absolutely no data to postulate a future filter. You being 
> able to read this message is not a source of data for statistical 
> reasoning

Actually, it is. It is just a single data point, but it can skew things 
surprisingly strongly: http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/anthropicshadow.pdf

> (lottery winners don't have a good grasp of overall winning probability). 

Actually, they know the probability is nonzero. That is in itself a lot 
of information. And depending on which branch of anthropics you buy into 
(BTW: advert: 
http://www.philosophy-of-cosmology.ox.ac.uk/events/fourth-oxford-miniseries-anthropics-selection-effects-and-fine-tuning-in-cosmology/ 
- course and workshop in December) they might get other weak information.

> As long as we don't have causally unentangled data about higher life 
> nevermind life capable of intelligent observer status nobody has a case. 

Well, data can be of different kinds. The evolutionary history of Earth 
has a bias due to one species becoming observers, but there is 
information in it (does it look hard to ramp up or down encephalization 
or behavioral complexity?)


-- 
Dr Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University