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Under MWI of QM, anthropics gets weird.
In a single universe interpretation, we can posit biogenesis is rare, but we do know it happened at least once in ~two trillion galaxies worth of stars in ~13 billion years.
In MWI it could be even rarer - with unlimited branches for wild coincidences of chemistry to occur, we’re necessarily living in a branch where such did occur. Allow for argument’s sake that biogenesis is so rare that branches where life is found are tiny in measure. We find ourselves in such a branch, so anthropics and branching kind of gives us the first miracle for free. But given we’re here, the chance it happened here independently TWICE is vanishingly small again.
If biogenesis is so rare it occurs in a tiny minority of branches only, then in almost all branches where it does occur, it only occurs once.
If I haven’t badly misunderstood something, I think if we accept MWI then it seems much more plausible that we are the only life in the universe.
Anthropics start out weird.
Trying to reason from a single datapoint out of an unknown distribution is always going to be low-information and low-predictive-power. MWI expands the scope of the unknown distribution (or does it? It all adds up to normal, right?), but doesn't change the underlying unknowns.
In Transparent Newcomb's Problem, your decision determines whether you existed when you were making the decision. It's not valid to conclude that you exist merely from subjective observation of your own existence, because such observation can take place within counterfactuals, and you wouldn't be able to tell that you are within a counterfactual or actuality other than by reasoning about (or determining) your situation's actuality status. Like math, existence can't be perceived by looking at rocks.
In a single universe interpretation, we can posit biogenesis is rare, but we do know it happened at least once in ~two trillion galaxies worth of stars in ~13 billion years.
So this already doesn't follow, your conclusion is true, but doesn't require MWI. Even without MWI, observing our own existence doesn't tell us anything about the probability of biogenesis (and subsequent development of generally intelligent life).
I disagree. I think the fact that our reality branches a la Everett has no bearing on our probability of biogensis.
Consider a second biogenesis that happened recently enough and far away enough that light (i.e., information, causal influence) has not had enough time to travel from it to us. We know such regions of spacetime "recent enough and far away enough" exist and in principle could host life, but since we cannot observe a sign of life or a sign of lack of life from them, they are not relevant to our probability of biogenesis whereas by your logic, they are relevant.
Double-attrition perfectionism and the violin
An interesting thing about violin is that the learning process seems nearly designed to produce 'tortured perfectionists' as its output.
The first decade of learning operates as a two-pronged selection process that attrits students at different times in their learning journey, requiring perfectionism at some times and tolerance at others.
You could be boring and argue that it always requires both attention to detail and tolerance of imperfection, simultaneously. You could also argue that there's a fractal, scale invariant pattern of striving for perfection and then tolerating failure. You're boring and probably right, but I think there's actually a common, macro structure to that decade, that goes 'tolerance-perfectionism-tolerance-perfectionism.'
Specifically:
The result is that if someone plays violin at a professional level, they either have a very healthy relationship with their perfectionism and can adapt it to the needs of the moment (hahahahhhahahah), or they are a deeply disturbed individual who is somehow either able to pretend not to hate their playing for years, or able to force themselves to care about details that don't bother them in the slightest.
This is as far as I've gone (I'm on the final step, trying to reach professional level). If you go further and become a soloist, I don't know what that implies about your psychology. Soloists seem normal and occasionally seem well-adjusted, but perhaps we should learn to fear them.
Interesting observation. It matches my impression of MANY skills, from software development to carpentry - the seeking of perfection on many dimensions, along with the tolerance (and SEEKING) of variance and uniqueness in pursuit of a somewhat illegible goal.
I keep thinking about this post! I've been trying to get back into playing violin on and off, and it does a good job of describing why I've found that so hard. I stopped early on in your fourth stage, and my ear is way ahead of my ability to play anything it actually wants to listen to.
I guess once I join an orchestra I'll enjoy that enough to get some momentum, but solo playing is pretty unrewarding right now.
Big +1 to playing with others, especially others around the same level or slightly better or worse.
Motivation is one thing, but it's also just... healthier. One's musical 'practice' can't be totally inward-looking, that's when perfectionism starts to bite. Orchestra forces you to compromise and actually learn and perform music, gets you out of the practice room, and generally turbocharges your learning by exposing you to a more varied set of demands on your playing and musicality.
Super hard mode is forming a string quartet with others, since your playing is super exposed and it forces you to stay in time and balance your sound with others.