> [snip] But now consider the case where
> instead of the urns you have two possible human races, and
> instead of balls you have individuals, ranked according to birth
> order. As a matter of fact, you happen to find that your rank
> is about sixty billion. Now, says Carter and Leslie, we should
> reason in the same way as we did with the urns. That you should
> have a rank of sixty billion or so is much more likely is
> only 100 billion persons will ever have lived than if there will be
> many trillion persons. Therefore, by Bayes' theorem, you should
> update your beliefs about mankind's prospects and realise that
> an impending doomsday is much more probable than you have
> hitherto thought.
100,000 years ago the same experiment was tried, number 100 was picked.
There's more likely to be 1,000 people than there is 60 Billion!
The urns had a choice of two different amounts, we have a choice of infinite
amounts, what are the chances of a number between 0 and infinity being as
small as 60 billion? or 100 trillion?
~Wax