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Old 17-November-2005, 09:47 PM
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snarkophilus snarkophilus is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by grant hutchison
Trouble is, Carter's argument applies to you whether or not you know about it.
So the non-random distribution of "Doomsday knowledge" doesn't seem like it should have any more of an effect on Carter's "random life" stipulation than the non-random distribution of, say, knowledge of the rules of cricket.
The trouble is that the argument doesn't apply at all.

Look at it this way: if you can end up with a paradox, then you didn't state the rules of the problem correctly, or you've made a bad assumption. The world is consistent. So regardless of whether or not you accept that a specific criticism of Carter's idea is valid, the fact that you are coming up with paradoxes should lead you to believe that the idea is flawed somewhere.
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