Sleeping Beauty

Kamal

03 Dec 2025 — 2 min read

The friend I mentioned in my article about why the Anthropic Principle is a bad response to the Fine Tuning Problem isn't convinced. We haven't fully talked about why yet, but while talking a bit about it another problem broadly in the area that he and some others call "Anthropics" – roughly counter-intuitive problems where the perspective of the observer is relevant – came up. That's the Sleeping Beauty Problem. Given that decision theory is also hot with some of the others doing the writing challenge, I decided to write a bit about this.

And then I saw this Veritasium video about the problem and decided that I don't really have anything to add, apart from complaining about how overhyped this problem is. But I'll save you my complaints (why isn't Maleficent the one doing the experiment???) and recommend you watch the video with the time you'd have spent letting me complain to you.

Not going to watch it? Okay, I'll outline a slightly modified version of the thought experiment given at the end of the video (from 8:13). Happily it almost reconnects to the Fine Tuning Argument. 🌌 It'll make more sense if you're at least familiar with the Sleeping Beauty Problem, so maybe watch the first few minutes of the video or read the first few paragraphs of this article. But you should still be able to answer it without doing either of those things.

Suppose, in the beginning, shortly before creating the heavens and the earth, God created you and said to you, "I'm going to toss a fair coin. If it comes up heads, I'll create a single universe and fine-tune its fundamental constants for the existence of life. If it comes up tails, I'll create a multiverse of universes containing every possible configuration of the fundamental constants, including, of course, infinitely many that are fine-tuned for life." And take this article as God's reminder to you of that pre-creation encounter with Him.

Heads and tails of an Eastern Caribbean one dollar coin

Do you think you're very probably in the multiverse? Are the odds just 50-50?

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We alone are faithful

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A parable of a rich man with many children