I occasionally read the blog of Scott Adams, the author of Dilbert. He claims to believe that the world is a simulation, but who can blame him? His own situation is so improbable he must cast about for some explanation. I predict that among celebrities (and the unusually successful in other fields), there is an unusually high amount of belief that just by wanting things hard enough they will come to you-- because, like everyone else, they wished for something in life, but unlike most people, they actually got it.
Today's post, Real-Life Anthropic Weirdness was originally published on 05 April 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Extremely rare events can create bizarre circumstances in which people may not be able to effectively communicate about improbability.
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Incremental Progress and the Valley, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.