Talk:Anthropic bias

message: The anthropic principle is just nonsense. Think about itfor just a nanosecond: why hasn't anyone formulated the piscatory principle, the reptilian principle, or the bacteriophagic principle? Becasue these beings don't sit around all day meditating on their own spectaculr self-importance. The very existence of the anthropic prninciple is POV.  Wikipedia would do well do provide equal time fot the views of the bililions of other species of organism that inhabit this planet. The whole idea of anthropic bias is anthropically biased. Refuting the anthropic bias is anthropically biased. --Lacatosias 14:57, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Regardless of the actual merits of the theory, it does seem to justify its place in a broader encyclopedia. If this was SEP, I would probably go along with you, and not recommend an article on the subject. The progenitor of the theory, Nick Bostrom, is however rather active on his own websites, and it is natural to think that some people will turn to wikipedia for information with a NPOV. All the more reason why this article should be wikified, and supplemented with a paragraph of possible objections (including your criticism about it not being refutable and hence (in Popperian terms at least), unscientific) and published criticisms (if there are any). --Thorsen 05:37, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why bother with such nonsense anyway? 

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Good heavens, Nick!!--Lacatosias 15:20, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  That's what I love about books that attempt to explain everything 

message: The second part of the criticism section (about it being self-referentially inconsistent) isn't very clear. Even if bias hinders the ability of humas to form objective theories, it doesn't follow that all human theories are false. Isn't it possible that Nick Bostrom managed to avoid anthropic bias and come up with an objective theory despite being human and lacking divine inspiration? The "beta" option also doesn't make sense - shouldn't 'bias' be attributed only to people, and not to theories (which are not biased, but rather true or false). Maybe it should be reformulated to state that the theory was formed in the presence of anthropic bias. If this rewording is acceptable, isn't this a satisfactory alternative? AAMiller 02:57, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticism 

message: I have quite a few problems with this article:
* Bostrom's book Anthropic Bias is mainly about what is usually called the anthropic principle, although he extends this line of reasoning in unusual directions (e.g. traffic analysis!).  As I read it (the on-line bits, anyway) he likes to avoid the word principle except in discussion of previous work, because its usage has become so muddled (and anyway seems a bit pretentious).
* The section Background seems to contravene WP:NOR in the sense that Bostrom doesn't refer at all to Wigner or Lakoff & Nunez, nor do the reviews of his book posted at his web site. It is not at all clear that his "anthropic bias" is related to the cognitive bias discussed in these references. Also, the report of Wigner's contribution seems to be based on the following footnote, relating to a discussion of whether we are smart enough to understand the ultimate theory:
:"This passage was written after a great deal of hesitation. The writer is convinced that it is useful, in epistemological discussions, to abandon the idealization that the level of human intelligence has a singular position on an absolute scale. In some cases it may even be useful to consider the attainment which is possible at the level of the intelligence of some other species. However, the writer also realizes that his thinking along the lines indicated in the text was too brief and not subject to sufficient critical appraisal to be reliable."
:...which is vastly more tentative than what the article claims Wigner said.
* The section Criticism seems to be more OR by editors, who don't seem to have read Bostrom's book. There is of course a large scientific literature on the anthropic principle which is mainly concerned with recognising various anthropic biases, e.g. that there would be no observers like us in a universe without carbon, without stars, without stable orbits, or which lasted for only 10-43 seconds. These at least are perfectly recognisable. Bostrom's book is about how such constraints should be treated in a proper statistical way, and various related ideas (e.g. the Doomsday argument).
Given the case for removing these sections in toto, should what remains of this article just be merged with the one on the anthropic principle, which already has a brief discussion of Bostrom's approach? PaddyLeahy 18:18, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Anthropic bias vs. anthropic principle 

message: As per the previous comment, I have deleted this article and replaced it with a re-direct to Anthropic principle. Of the three references cited on the original page, the Bostrom one is cited at the target and the other two, as argued above, have nothing to do with Anthropic bias as defined by Bostrom. Certainly Wigner does not use the term Anthropic bias; if Lakoff does, this page should be a disambiguation link instead of a redirect. There was no suggestion in the deleted article that Lakoff uses this term though, just the incorrect assertion that anthropic bias is an example of Lakoff's cognitive bias. PaddyLeahy 20:30, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Justification for re-direct