From: Emlyn O'regan (oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au)
Date: Wed Apr 23 2003 - 23:17:33 MDT
(I didn't finish this, I hit the send button accidentally. I continue it
here)
I said:
> These arguments always rely on the assumption that we are
> representative of the most common state of intelligent life
> (in a general sense) because we must be, probabilistically speaking.
>
> However, I don't think it can hold water. Look in from the
> outside; at any period in the entirety of intelligent
> thought, all intelligent observers must ask this question.
> Every observer will be outside norms in some way. Using this
> argument, each such observer will draw an erroneous
> conclusion about the future of the social universe, by
> assuming that he/she/it *must* represent the most probable
> outcome in all cases.
>
> For example, I happen to be born as a white westerner in the
> 20th century, with all the attendant privelage. Am I to
> conclude that the average situation of all people is mine;
> most people live a life, and find themselves in
> circumstances, similar to mine? I would be wrong; my
> situation, the accident of my birth, is rather unusual and
> uncommon; it seems improbable.
But it's not; I am exactly as likely to exist as every other person who ever
did,does or will; 100% likely. On my existence, I have a very special and
unapproachable variation of the anthropic principle in effect; I am the only
instance of me, and so I cannot draw any inference regarding the probability
of me being purely from the fact that I am.
Similarly, I unable to infer probabilities from the situation in which I
find myself; I am, in an environment, and the likelihood of that is 100%; it
must be.
Emlyn
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Mitchell Porter [mailto:mitchtemporarily@hotmail.com]
> > Sent: Thursday, 24 April 2003 12:16 PM
> > To: extropians@lucifer.com
> > Subject: Doomsday vs Diaspora
> >
> >
> > I'm a member of an intelligent species, born during an
> > unprecedented technology-driven population boom. It seems
> > thinkable that my species could be the seed of a cosmic
> > civilization capable of spreading indefinitely into the
> > universe. But if that happens, the future population of
> > the civilization born in this biosphere will be orders of
> > magnitude greater than the number of all humans who have
> > lived so far. This would place those of us alive now at a
> > remarkably early stage in the history of that civilization;
> > if one regards oneself as a random sample from that history,
> > this position is not just remarkably early but also extremely
> > unlikely. One might therefore conclude that the future of
> > cosmic expansion is not to be, and that instead we are headed
> > for an irreversible population decline, cause unknown. In
> > that scenario, the majority of humans that will ever live
> > is alive during the final population boom, and so we can
> > after all view ourselves as historically typical members of
> > our species. (The majority of human history was spent on the
> > savannahs, but the population now is so much greater than
> > the pre-agricultural one that the *numerical* majority of
> > all-humans-who-will-ever-live is urban ... in this scenario.)
> >
> > This is a version of the Doomsday Argument. If one pays
> > attention to Earth alone, it is logically consistent and
> > self-contained. However, it seems that one also ought to be
> > able to regard oneself as a random sample from the total
> > *cosmic* population of intelligent entities, and at this
> > point the Diaspora Scenario of cosmic colonization becomes
> > relevant again. Let us assume that the average total
> > population, from start to finish, of a Diaspora civilization
> > is about 10^9 times greater than that of a Doomsday
> > civilization. For average cosmic citizens (such as, by
> > hypothesis, us) to find themselves in a Doomsday civilization
> > would imply that such civilizations are *at least* 10^9
> > times as numerous as Diaspora civilizations. And in general,
> > one might say that:
> >
> > Validity of Cosmic Doomsday Argument (CDA) implies that
> > Frequency of Doomsday civs >= N * Frequency of Diaspora civs,
> > where N = (Typical Diaspora pop/Typical Doomsday pop)
> >
> > This is a very simple observation, but I don't think I've
> > seen it anywhere in the Doomsday Argument literature. It would
> > be interesting to have a realistic value for N.
> >
> >
> > _________________________________________________________________
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> >
> >
>
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