The irony here is you seem to be making the same objections I was making to you about this in my objective values thread.

The meaning describes a possible state of affairs. If that state of affairs is actual, then the meaning/proposition is true. Is that not basically what you’ve said to me?

So "The dog is on the rug," in terms of meaning, is a set of mental states in someone's head. You said that you agree with that. So how do we go from that to the meaning in an individual's head matching a fact, where we're no longer talking about the meaning in the person's head? — Terrapin Station

I’ve not said anything about the meaning leaving an individual’s head. I’m saying the meaning either matches a fact or it doesn’t. What role does a person play in the matching of fact to proposition, beyond thinking up the proposition?

I’ve given an example. Your response was to basically insist I was arguing meaning to be extramental, when there was no indication I was.

The dog is on the rug. If the dog is on the rug, then that proposition matches a fact. If it isn’t, it doesn’t. I’m not seeing where I come in to that matching process.

So once a meaning is created, which is an event in someone's head, then the way that we can extramentally see if a fact matches the proposition is . . . what? — Terrapin Station

We don’t recognise the match extramentally, but there’s the point: The match is something we recognise, rather than cause. The match is independent of our mental recognition of it.

Even assuming the obvious misreading (I said I don’t think meaning is extramental) your response seems strange... A misreading and a typo?

I don’t think meaning is extramental. I’m saying once a meaning/proposition such as “the dog is on the rug” is created, whether it matches a fact or not does not actually depend on whether we think it does.

You said above that propositions are the meanings of statements. So I’m talking about the meaning of those words matching a fact.

How would that work? We'd need to be able to describe/detail the process. — Terrapin Station

The dog is on the rug. If the dog is on the rug, then that proposition matches a fact. If it isn’t, it doesn’t. I’m not seeing where I come in to that matching process.

The matching would have to be objective. That is, it would have to be a property of extramental things.

How are we supposed to arrive at extramental matching? — Terrapin Station

Because something can match another thing regardless of anyone thinking it does. The existence of the proposition depends on thought, but I don’t see that the matching does.

True to the people who judge it to match. False to people who judge otherwise. (Simplifying so there are no other options.) — Terrapin Station

Can either group be said to be right?

The reason I agree that there is no objective truth is because of a "technical" issue re truth in analytic philosophy that I described above. (Truth is a property of propositions in analytic phil, propositions are the meanings of statements, and then my view stems from what I think the ontology of meaning is and how I think that the "link" between propositions and other things work--namely, that it's a judgment that a mind has to make.)

I do, however, think that there are objective facts. Most folks on the board seem to use "truth" so that it amounts to the same thing as "fact" (even though a couple different senses of "fact" tend to be conflated here, too). So that leads to some confusion. — Terrapin Station

If a proposition is true when it matches a fact - and the fact is objective - then why in your view would that truth not be objective? I understand meaning requires a mind to think it, but a proposition could be thought false by everyone, yet still be true. To exist the meaning/proposition requires a thinking mind, but its truth doesn’t depend on what anyone thinks beyond that, making it objective.

Or if a proposition is neither true nor false until someone judges it, which one is it when two people judge differently, and why?

I looked up those verses and they’re about the difficulty of entering the Kingdom of God. If those are the ones you meant then I suppose he could have been inspired by them, sure; by the notion that perfection is something most participate in to an inadequate degree.

I didn’t come up with the triangle example but I agree it illustrates the point well enough. And I haven’t but do intend to read some Heidegger.

Look, my first post explains the argument clearly enough. If you don’t get it, then I guess you don’t get it.

The argument doesn’t posit this. That’s just a useful way of visualising
— AJJ

Didn't you tell me earlier that this was, in fact, your argument? — Echarmion

My argument has never been that we are disembodied souls placed randomly in a human body. That’s just a way of visualising the argument.

In fact I didn’t even say that. I said the thought experiment involves abstracting yourself from history then putting yourself back in. I didn’t mean that is literally something that happens.

If you split humanity’s entire population into a group of 1 and then the rest then you have a point here. But we’re not doing that. Since we want to work out what time we’re most likely in, we’re splitting humanity into segments of time: generations.

The issue with the puzzle is that we're not disembodied souls that are randomly placed in one of any of the human bodies which will ever live. — Michael

The argument doesn’t posit this. That’s just a useful way of visualising it. The fact is we don’t know where we are in history - beginning, middle or end - and the argument shows it’s more likely to be the end. From our perspective where we are in history is somewhat random, because we don’t know.

The idea is just that it’s unlikely for a random person to be at the beginning of a history like that, and way more likely they’re at the end of one.

OK... will you deign to share why?

In that case your conclusions on the first page:

This shows how unlikely it is that we’ll ever expand out into the galaxy, since it would mean we’re all part of a tiny fraction of all humans, rather than the other huge group. Instead it stands to reason that we’re at the top of graph 2’s curve.
— AJJ

Don't follow from your argument. — Echarmion

They do though. If you’re plucked out of a history that ends with us having colonised the galaxy and put back in randomly, it’s highly unlikely you’ll wind up in this tiny segment of the total population. It’s therefore unlikely that space colonisation is going to happen.

Well it’s how the argument I’ve been making goes.

I don’t think either is OK, since we can’t be anyone else. The thought experiment involves abstracting yourself from history then putting yourself back in randomly. We find that the last generation is the most likely one for us to wind up in, so that’s what makes sense for us to think, even though it’s not unlikely we’re somewhere else.

I don’t think so: We know who we are among everyone currently alive, but we don’t know where in human history we all are, except that we’re currently heading it.

That’s assuming we expand out into the galaxy, which I figure would involve a huge increase in population (through the occupation of other planets) that would dwarf our population up until now.

What is your distinction between “best chance” and “most likely”?

Whichever generation you bet on is going to be against the aggregate probability of you being among the others. So the way to distinguish between them is to say which ones are against a lower aggregate, which it makes sense to call the more/most likely of the options.

I haven’t been saying this is probably the last generation; only that a random person is always most likely to be part of the last generation, compared to other individual generations.

It seems to me then that the best answer in your view to the question, “which generation are we most likely to be a part of?” is “a one other than the one you bet on”, which is really to say none of them.

If the 3-1 is the best chance available then the 3-1 is the most likely to win. Most likely to win is what “best odds” means right? Payouts come into this if you say you shouldn’t bet in a spot; payouts are essential to consider there.

I’m saying “I’m going to bet that it’s blue but it’s more likely not blue” - which is true if there are 15 balls and only 5 are blue. — Michael

But of all the balls blue is the most likely one you’re holding. You can say it’s more likely to not be that colour about any of them, but it has to be one, and one of them is going to be most likely.

If the chances are 3-1 and you’re getting 3-1 on your money then you can bet all you want since you’ll break even. Does “best odds” not mean most likely to win?

You’re still in check as far as I’m concerned. What you’re doing it picking a ball and saying, “whatever ball this is, it’s more likely another one.”

It seems to me what you’re doing is selecting an option and reasoning that you’re most likely not to have selected that option. You’ve chosen a ball but you’re most likely not to have chosen that ball. You’re in a generation but you’re most likely not in that generation.

There's a difference between an answer being the best answer and that answer being more likely right than wrong. The best answer has < 50% chance of being right, so it's wrong to say that we're most likely in the last generation. We're most likely not in the last generation. — Michael

I haven’t said the answer is more likely right than wrong. For whichever generation we might be in you can say we’re most likely not in that generation, but we can’t not be in whichever generation is ours so I don’t see why that’s a factor.

So the question I’ve been answering is which generation carries the best likelihood of being ours. And the answer is the last one; the last one is the most likely to be ours; of all the generations we can be in we’re most likely (but not more likely than not) to be in the last one. It seems to me that last part is only a contradiction if you allow the chance that we are not in whichever our generation is.

So are you claiming that information concerning the timing of the end of humanity is encoded in a) the fact that humans exist right now and b) the assumption that the living human population will be highest shortly before it's demise? — Echarmion

Yes.

Generations aren't real. they are more or less arbitrary groupings of people who were born in the same time period. But regardless, the generations are the rooms in the hotel. You want to know which room you're in. — Echarmion

Sure, but those arbitrary groupings are real and that’s what we’re using.

So let's set up a proper thought experiment: The entire human population that will ever have lived is grouped into 100 hotel rooms. Every room represents the same amount of time between humanity's evolution and it's demise, but you don't know how long that is. Every room is an incredibly vast extradimensional space, and it is completely dark, so you don't know how many other people are in your room and you have no way of communicating with them.

Now a voice tells you that you will go to heaven if you can guess which room you're in. You can choose any range of 5 rooms as your guess, as long as you're in any one of them, you win. Which range do you choose? — Echarmion

Whatever the last five are, because that will be the range with the most people in it. That’s assuming we go extinct quickly, but whatever the choice you’d choose a range towards the end of all the rooms.

And if you're asked to pick a generation then, yes, you should say the last generation -- although you're more likely to be wrong than right, and so if you're asked if you're more likely in the last generation than not in the last generation then you should say not in the last generation. — Michael

You seem to be saying you’re more likely to be in a generation other than the one you’re in.

Once you’re in a generation there is no chance you’re in the other four. So the question is which particular generation is yours, and the best answer is “the last one”.

Mathematical reasoning, being a deductive process, cannot generate information though. — Echarmion

Well sure, I guess reasoning doesn’t generate information, but it does discover it.

If those are the groups you are given by some outside source. But if no outside source provides you with any groupings, and you're just standing alone in a room, you cannot reason yourself into rooms 3 to 100 by arbitrarily deciding on these groups. Given arbitrary groups, one can make any sequence of rooms the most likely one. No such thought experiment tells you where you actually are though. — Echarmion

The groups we’re using in the thought experiment are real though: Generations, with the assumption that each is larger than the last, which so far has actually been the case.

It's even worse when, as is the case with future generations, you don't even know how many rooms there are. If you simply know there are n rooms and you are in one of them, there is no way to tell what number your room is. Yet the logic of the "doomsday argument" would have you believe that you can. — Echarmion

That we don’t know how many generations there will be is entirely the point though. If we knew there’d be no room for the probabilities we’re establishing.

But if I’m blindfolded and asked which one colour you’ve given me then I’m going to say blue. I can’t say “not blue”, because I’ve been asked to pick a particular colour.

What you’re actually saying is you have more chance of being within generations 1-4. What you actually have to do is pick one; the one most likely for you to be in.

I did that here:

1: 100 people (6.7%)
2: 200 people (13.3%)
3: 300 people (20%)
4: 400 people (26.7%)
5: 500 people (33.3%) — Michael

Doesn’t this prove my point? I think the mistake here is making groups 1-4 one group. You can’t be in multiple generations; since you can only be in one it’s most likely you’re in 5.

Your dice example isn’t analogous to the group situation described. We’re not rolling a dice to find out which group we’re in, but using the amount of people in each group to work out the likelihoods.

A dice analogy would go like this: Imagine you’re a spot on a dice. Which side are you most likely on? You’re more likely on the 2-6 sides than the 1 side. Of those you’re more likely on the 3-6 sides, and so on.

But as you state, this isn't information, but an assumption. But even if we grant the assumption as essentially correct, it does still not contain any information about humanities demise, so the question of where that information comes from remains. — Echarmion

I would say a reasonable assumption is information. It’s certainly something we can reason from.

No it doesn’t contain information about humanity’s demise. It’s the mathematical reasoning that shows we’re most likely close to that demise.

As an analogy, take the hotel room example. You're in a hotel with 100 rooms, but you don't know which room you're in. If someone asks you whether you are in the first ten rooms, your answer should be no. But if someone asks you whether you are in room 2 or in room 50 your answer should not be fifty just because you are more likely not to be in the first 10 rooms. Because for that specific question, the probability of either is 1/100. This probability doesn't change if you arbitrarily divide the hotel rooms into groups. — Echarmion

The probability does change if you divide the rooms into groups. If I say you’re either in rooms 1 or 2 or in any of the rest, then it’s most likely you’re in the second “any of the rest” group.

If you were blindfolded, so to speak, and told you were part of one of those generations, which would you predict you were a part of?

Your answer wouldn’t be “I’m most likely part the first four”, but rather “I’m most likely part of the last four”. Of those four you’re most likely part of the last three. Of those the last two, and of those the last one.

Is that not right?

You’ve blundered here and now you’re trying too hard to disagree with me.

The information we use is the assumption that the final generation will be the largest one. The mathematical reasoning we use is that it’s most likely for a random person to be part of the largest group, assuming we don’t already know where they are.

But we're turning that ignorance into a probability without further information. That is impossible. If we're ignorant about what graph we are on and where we are on that graph, we can't magically turn said ignorance into new information using math — Echarmion

No we aren’t, and yes we can.

We don’t know where we are. Mathematical reasoning tells us we’re most likely at the top Graph 2’s curve. We might not be, but what we can say is it’s more likely.

This shows how unlikely it is that we’ll ever expand out into the galaxy, since it would mean we’re all part of a tiny fraction of all humans, rather than the other huge group. Instead it stands to reason that we’re at the top of graph 2’s curve.
— AJJ

But according to that logic, it stands to reason that everyone who has ever lived was at the top of graph 2s curve, but they weren't. How is that possible? — Echarmion

If we know that someone is not at the top of Graph 2’s curve then obviously they’re not at the top of Graph 2’s curve. But we don’t know where we are, and in that ignorance the probability that we’re at the top of Graph 2’s curve comes into play.

Yeah, I guess we can.

I’m not sure it raises the chances of being a Boltzmann brain, since for that to be likely the universe would need to have had a much longer past that it’s commonly (to my knowledge) said to have had.

And it seems to me it’s not actually possible for you (anyone) to have been anyone else, since obviously you’d not be you then. I don’t see why you being you makes it likely that everyone else is a zombie, rather than everyone else just being the particular conscious person they are.