Abstract

The fact that our Universe is fine-tuned for life is widely believed to be evidence in favor of the world-ensemble hypotheses, only if the observational selection effect is taken into account. But in Ito's recent book this type of reasoning is criticized as illusory due to the inverse gambler's fallacy, and the observational selection effect is denied its supposed theoretical value. We show that Ito's analogical examples are irrelevant and his arguments are mathematically wrong. There are actually some philosophical insights the observational selection effect would bring, concerning not only the world-ensemble cosmology but also the nature of consciousness, self, identity, and especially the causal theory of reference.