Another checkmark in front of the “antrhopic reasoning is whack”:
arXiv:0802.4121
Title: Ants are not Conscious
Authors: Russell K. Standish
Anthropic reasoning is a form of statistical reasoning based upon finding oneself a member of a particular reference class of conscious beings. By considering empirical distribution functions defined over animal life on Earth, we can deduce that the vast bulk of animal life is unlikely to be conscious. As a side effect of these deliberations, I also show that naturally occurring fragmentation/coalescence processes give rise to a power law distribution of fragment sizes, a previously unknown mechanism for generating power laws.