本文旨在提供一个关于自然选择原理的温和且易于理解的入门介绍。作者在之前的文章中探讨了将自然选择原理应用于数学效率的问题后，意识到许多人对自然选择原理的理解存在不足，甚至将其视为与日常生活脱节的理论。现有的一些介绍性指南往往使该原理显得更加神秘和遥远。因此，本文旨在提供一个“婴儿版”的指南，帮助大众更好地理解和应用这一概念。文章内容涵盖了自然选择原理的介绍、参考类别网球以及自我暗示假设，并辅以实际生活中的实例和一些更进阶的讨论，如如何在日常生活中运用自然选择推理、教学笔记、人口加权推理，以及推荐了相关领域的进阶阅读材料。

🌍 **自然选择原理入门**: 文章旨在提供一个易于理解的自然选择原理入门指南，旨在解决大众对其理解不足或将其视为与日常生活脱节的普遍问题。通过“婴儿版”的介绍方式，作者希望能让更多人轻松掌握这一概念。

🎾 **参考类别网球**: 该部分通过一个具体的例子“参考类别网球”来解释自然选择中的一个关键概念。作者通过设问引导读者思考，例如，在一家日托中心，如果平均班级人数是8人，那么新入学的孩子最有可能在多少人的班级里？这帮助理解我们如何根据已知信息界定和推理。

💡 **自我暗示假设与生活实例**: 文章深入探讨了“自我暗示假设”，并提供了多个生活化的案例来阐释。例如，婴儿玛利亚认为她所在的医院有很多婴儿，这可能反映了她基于自身观察的“自我暗示”；婴儿艾莎总能找到适合她的玩具，这可能暗示了某种“友善”的安排。这些例子生动地展示了我们如何在日常生活中不自觉地运用自然选择的推理模式。

🧠 **进阶应用与思考**: 除了基础概念，文章还探讨了如何将自然选择推理应用于日常生活，并介绍了“人口加权推理”等进阶概念。例如，婴儿布莱尔在被唤醒后思考父母的硬币抛掷结果，以及婴儿克洛伊在得知自己可能是一个克隆体后如何评估概率，都展示了更复杂的推理场景。

📚 **推荐阅读与社区反馈**: 文章最后提供了一系列推荐阅读材料，涵盖了从博斯特龙、卡尔史密斯到特里斯坦·库克的作品，甚至包括相关的小说，旨在帮助读者深入学习。作者也积极征求社区的反馈和建议，以不断完善指南。

Published on July 28, 2025 10:20 PM GMT

I've written up a post offering a gentle, accessible introduction to anthropic reasoning! After writing my previous post on applying the anthropic principle to mathematical effectiveness, I realized three things:

Many people have a poor or non-existent understanding of anthropic reasoningMany people who have some understanding of anthropics treat it as "separate magisterium" far away from everyday lifeThe existing guides on anthropics perpetuate this problem, making anthropics come across as more mystical and far-away than it actually is.

So hopefully having a "baby's guide" to anthropics can help alleviate this problem! If you or some other baby in your life is pondering difficult anthropic problems read (or send them) this guide! The guide covers:

1. Introduction to the anthropic principle

2. Reference Class tennis

3. Self-Indication Assumption

with worked examples from practical everyday life, as well as more advanced (toddler-friendly) topics:

How to use anthropics reasoning in everyday life?Pedagogical notesPopulation-weighted reasoningRecommendations for further reading from Bostrom and Carlsmith to Tristan Cook's Grabby aliens model, and even relevant fiction

Excited for thoughts, suggestions for improvement, additional resources, and further feedback from the community!

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Baby Emma’s parents are waiting on hold for customer support for a new experimental diaper. The robo-voice cheerfully announces: "Our call center is rarely busy!" Should Emma’s parents expect a response soon?

Baby Ali’s parents are touring daycares. A daycare’s glossy brochure says the average class size is 8. If Ali attends, should Ali (and his parents) assume that he’d most likely be in a class with about 8 kids?

Baby Maria was born in a hospital. She looks around her room and thinks “wow this hospital sure has many babies!” Should Maria think most hospitals have a lot of babies, her hospital has unusually many babies, or something else?

For every room Baby Jake walks into, there’s a baby in it. Why? Is the universe constrained in such a way that every room must have a baby?

Baby Aisha loves toys. Every time she goes to a toy box, she always finds herself near a toy box with baby-friendly toys she can play with, not chainsaws or difficult textbooks on cosmology or something. Why is the world organized in such a friendly way for Aisha?

Baby Briar’s parents are cognitive scientists who love small experiments. They flipped a coin before naptime. If heads, they wake Briar up once after an hour. If tails, they wake Briar up twice - once after 30 minutes, then again after an hour (and Briar has no memory of the first wake-up because... baby brain). Briar is woken up and wonders to himself “Hey, did my parents get heads or tails?”

Baby Chloe’s “parents” are Kaminoan geneticists. They also flipped a coin. They decided that if the coin flip was heads, they would make one genetically enhanced clone and call her Chloe. If the coin flip was tails, they would make 1000 Chloes. Chloe wakes up and learns this. What probability should she assign to the coin flip being heads?

Discuss