Anthropic Bias

Philosopher Nick Bostrom investigates how to reason when evidence may be skewed by observation selection effects, that is, when it has been filtered by the requirement that some observer be in a position to receive it. The problem also goes by the names anthropic principle, self-locating belief and indexical information. Bostrom opens with the hypothesis that the universe is fine-tuned and the ways it might be explained, a multiverse among them, and takes up puzzles such as the Doomsday Argument, Sleeping Beauty and the Presumptuous Philosopher. He argues against the self-indication assumption, introduces the self-sampling assumption and refines it into a strong version based on observer-moments. The result is a mathematically explicit theory meant to serve science while avoiding paradox.

Patrick Collison has it on the reading list on his Bookshelf page.