Meetup : Canberra: Intro to Anthropic Reasoning

post by DanielFilan · 2014-07-16T13:10:40.109Z · LW · GW · Legacy · 1 comments

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  Discussion article for the meetup : Canberra: Intro to Anthropic Reasoning
  Discussion article for the meetup : Canberra: Intro to Anthropic Reasoning
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Discussion article for the meetup : Canberra: Intro to Anthropic Reasoning

WHEN: 25 July 2014 06:00:00PM (+1000)

WHERE: 108 North Road, Acton, ACT

I Think Therefore I Am; I Am, Therefore The World Is About To Be Destroyed!

Nick will be talking about anthropic reasoning, a collection of theories about how to handle observation selection biases, or in other words, how to reason about a problem when the fact that you exist gives you relevant information about that problem.

He will introduce and discuss anthropic theories such as the Self-Sampling Assumption, philosophical problems such as The Sleeping Beauty Problem and the Doomsday Argument, and a decision theory specifically designed to get around problems that involve anthropic bias. This will be followed by a group discussion and a game involving anthropic reasoning. As always, vegan snacks will be provided.

General meetup info:

If you use Facebook, please join our group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/lwcanberra/

Structured meetups are held on the second Saturday and fourth Friday of each month from 6 pm until late in the CSIT building, room N101.

There will be LWers at the Computer Science Students Association's weekly board games night, held on Wednesdays from 7 pm in the same location.

Discussion article for the meetup : Canberra: Intro to Anthropic Reasoning

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comment by DanielFilan · 2014-07-23T23:53:51.873Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

By an amazing coincidence, Giulio Tononi, leading proponent of the Integrated Information Theory of consciousness, is giving a talk at ANU just before the meetup. It is at 4 pm in the Coombs building, seminar room A - you will want to arrive early, because Coombs is known for being rather maze-like. Full description of the talk is here: http://pastebin.com/dshkvZhi