The purpose of this website is to promote my approach to anthropic problems. I suggest anthropic topics, such as the sleeping beauty problem, end up paradoxical because the axiomatic role of perspective is overlooked.
(If you are familiar with anthropic paradoxes and want to straight get to the root of my argument you may want to look here.)
My approach regards perspective reasoning as fundamental and objective reasoning as derived. This is in contrast to traditional arguments that regard objective reasoning (i.e. perspective-independent reasoning) as fundamental and perspectives as additional information.
For each of us, our perceptions and experience originate from a particular perspective. Yet when reasoning we often remove ourselves as the first person and present our logic objectively. There are many names describing this objective way of thinking, e.g. “take the third-person view”, “use an outsider’s perspective”, “think as an impartial observer”, “the god’s eye view”, and “the view from nowhere”, etc.
I think the best way to highlight the differences between god’s-eye-view reasoning and first-person reasoning is to use examples. Imagine during Alex’s sleep some mad scientist placed him in a maze. After waking up, he sees the scientist left a map of the maze next to him. Nonetheless, he is still lost. Here we can say, given the map, the maze is known. Alex is lost because he doesn’t know his location.
Figure 1. From a god’s eye view, the maze’s location is known. But Alex’s location is unknown. The colored dots show some possibilities given Alex’s immediate surroundings.
In contrast, an alternative interpretation is to think in Alex’s shoes. I can say of course I know where I am. Right here. I can look down and see the place I am standing on. No location in the world is more clearly presented to me than here. I’m lost because I don’t know how is the maze located relative to me, even with the map.
Figure 2. Here is known. The maze’s location is unknown. The colored parts show some possibilities.
This difference also exists in examples involving time. Imagine a thunder wakes Alex up at night. Here we can say he doesn’t know what time it is. Maybe he went to bed at 10 pm and his alarm clock rings at 6 am. There is no information to place his awakening on the time axis.
Figure 3. From a god’s eye view, it is known when Alex went to bed and when the alarm clock is going to ring. But the time when the thunder wakes him up is unknown. Colored lines show some possibilities.
Alternatively, we can think from Alex’s perspective as he wakes up. I can say of course I know what time it is. It is now. It is the time most immediate to my perception and experience. No other moment is more clearly felt. What I don’t know is how long ago was 10 pm when I went to bed, and how far in the future will my alarm clock ring at 6 am, i.e. how other moments locate relative to now.
Figure 4. Now is known. But how other moments locate relative to now is unknown. The colored part shows some possibilities.
The same difference also exists when identities are involved. Imagine Alex and Adam are identical twins. They got into a fatal accident while traveling in the same vehicle. One of them died while the other suffers complete memory loss. If they look the same and have the same belongings, it can be said there is no way to tell who survived the tragedy.
Figure 5. The past is known. The survivor is unknown. The colored parts show two possible outcomes.
There are other ways to describe the situation. For example, if we take the perspective of the survivor, it is obvious who survived the accident. I did. This self-identification is based on immediacy to the only subjective experience available: all senses felt are due to this body. No other persons or things are more closely perceived. Whether I was Alex or Adam, however, is unknown. In a sense, I don’t know how was the world located relative to me.
Figure 6. Obviously, I survived the accident while the other twin didn’t. However, the past is unknown. Whether I was Adam or Alex is lost. Colored parts show the two possibilities.
The above examples show how different perspectives analyze problems differently. Without getting into all the details I want to stress the following points:
- First-person thinking is self-centered. Special consideration is given to here, now, and I. The perspective center is regarded as primitively understood due to its closeness to perception and subjective experience. It is the reasoning starting point. Other locations, moments, and identities are defined by their relative relations to the perspective center.
- First-person and god’s-eye-view are two distinct ways of reasoning. They should not be used together. For example, in the maze problem, we cannot say both the maze’s and Alex’s locations are known. While the former is true from a god’s-eye-view and the latter is true from Alex’s first-person perspective, mixing the two would make the whole “lost in the maze” situation unexplainable.
Anthropic problems are unique because they are formulated from specific first-person perspectives (or a set of perspectives). There is no straightforward god’s-eye-view alternative.
Take the sleeping beauty problem as an example. It asks for the probability of Heads when beauty wakes up in the experiment. This question is only meaningful from Beauty’s first-person perspective. Since there are potentially two awakenings, from a god’s eye view, the situation is not fully specified. Which awakening is being referred to? Why update the probability base on that particular awakening? However, things are clear from beauty’s first-person viewpoint. I should obviously update my belief base on my experience: base on this awakening right now, the one I have experience of. From beauty’s point of view, today is primitively understood, no clarification is needed to differentiate it from the other day. This question should be answered the way it is asked, from Beauty’s first-person perspective. Yet, people still try to solve it objectively, by analyzing it from a god’s eye view. And that leads to paradoxes.
If you think the analysis so far makes some intuitive sense and want to know more please follow the navigation menu. (I recommend starting from the core argument. If you are already familiar with the anthropic paradoxes) It discussed in detail why perspectives are axiomatic in reasoning. And how it resolves various paradoxes including the fine-tuning argument and may apply to quantum interpretations as well.