Re: Objection to the Doomsday Argument?
Doug Bailey (Doug.Bailey@ey.com)
Mon, 17 Aug 1998 9:53:04 -0400
I continue to believe that the DA is either oversimplified
or we're relying too much on an inductive argument. I continue
to be troubled by the "snapshot" problem and the apparent
fact that no entity can escape the Doom Soon conclusion.
What if we apply the DA to other classes of objects? If we apply
the DA to stars, shouldn't conclude such stars are not atypical
and thus conclude Doom Soon for stars as well? Does the DA give us
any insight into the probability that Doom Soon for stars is any
higher than before we considered the DA? I can't see how.
If we apply the Bayesian analysis used by the DA to other classes
of objects we get some fairly alarming results. What if we apply
the DA to the number of scientific discoveries that have been
made? Are we to conclude that virtually all of the discoveries
that we have been made have already been made? To conclude
otherwise would be to violate the "typical" assumption that's
embedded in the current analysis of the DA.
The only difference I see is that the "stars" and "scientific
discoveries" examples have a third-person perspective (I'm
considering them) whereas when I consider the DA in the context
of humanity its a first-person perspective (I'm looking at my own
relative position). I'm not sure how this might be a problem. I
can see how the first-person perspective is significant to the DA
but I don't see how our assessment of ourselves would be qualitatively
different (for purposes of applying the DA) than our assessment of
scientific discoveries or stars.
The conclusions I am reaching using the DA is that I should expect
everything (that has a bounded existence) to become "extinct" and
other things (such as scientific discoveries) not to increase too
much in size between now and forever. The DA appears to place the
entire universe (at every conceivable level) on the execution block
or in deep freeze. Shouldn't such a set of conclusions raise some
concern about the viability of the DA as a reliable guide?
Doug
doug.bailey@ey.com