The Firing Squad Analogy: You are to be executed by firing squad. Five expert shooters take aim at short range. They all miss. ‘Wow, that was lucky,’ you think, as they reload. The second time, again, they all miss. This continues, time and time again. You start to think something must be going on, as it’s too much of a coincidence that all five would miss every time at close range. Perhaps you are being subject to some kind of cruel, mock execution, such as Dostoyevsky suffered. But then you remember: anthropic reasoning! If they hadn’t missed every time, you wouldn’t be around to reflect on
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