Authors: Nick Bostrom
Publish Date: 2006/06/01
Volume: 157, Issue: 1, Pages: 59-78
Abstract
The Sleeping Beauty problem is test stone for theories about self locating belief ie theories about how we should reason when data or theories contain indexical information Opinion on this problem is split between two camps those who defend the “1/2 view” and those who advocate the “1/3 view” I argue that both these positions are mistaken Instead I propose a new “hybrid” model which avoids the faults of the standard views while retaining their attractive properties This model appears to violate Bayesian conditionalization but I argue that this is not the case By paying close attention to the details of conditionalization in contexts where indexical information is relevant we discover that the hybrid model is in fact consistent with Bayesian kinematics If the proposed model is correct there are important lessons for the study of selflocation observation selection theory and anthropic reasoning
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