Self-Indication Assumption
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Self-Indication Assumption (SIA) is the philosophical principle defined by Nick Bostrom (who opposes it) in 2000 as:
- SIA: Given the fact that you exist, you should (other things equal) favor hypotheses according to which many observers exist over hypotheses on which few observers exist.
Although this anthropic principle was originally designed as a rebuttal to the Doomsday argument (by Dennis Dieks in 1992) it has general applications in the philosophy of anthropic reasoning, and Ken Olum has suggested it is important to the analysis of quantum cosmology.