RE: my objection to the Doomsday argument

From: gts (gts_2000@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Apr 30 2003 - 07:45:15 MDT

  • Next message: Greg Jordan: "RE: Experiences with Atkins diet"

    Ramez Naam wrote:

    > Perhaps I should say "every time it's been invoked and
    > /tested/". In ancient Rome, the doomsday argument would have
    > seemed just as valid as it does today. Yet it failed to predict a
    > cataclysm.

    I don't think we can say that it failed to predict a cataclysm for any
    ancient roman who might have invoked it. Rome was relatively recent in terms
    of human history. If doomsday is scheduled for 3000 A.D., for example, then
    any ancient Roman who invoked the DA would still look pretty smart in the
    year 3001.

    In greater terms, my point is that if doomsday is going to happen sometime
    soon, say in the next one to two thousand years, then the vast majority of
    humans ever to have lived would have been correct to predict an early
    doomsday for humanity. This is so because the population has expanded more
    or less exponentially. A few prehistoric people bright enough to have
    considered such things (assuming there were any) would look wrong or at
    least extremely early in their predictions, but those wrong predictors would
    make up only a small minority of humans ever to have lived. So then your
    argument that it didn't work in the past is offset by the fact that we can't
    say for certain that it didn't work in the past; if it works for us in the
    present then it will have worked for the vast majority of people in the
    past.

    > To be even more clear, let's perform the following thought
    > experiment. Let's say mankind or our offspring lifeforms
    > survive in the universe for several trillion more years.
    >
    > At every step along the way, the DA argument would seem true
    > and at almost all of those steps it would be wrong.

    But here your conclusion is contained in your premise.

    -gts



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Apr 30 2003 - 07:54:40 MDT