RE: my objection to the Doomsday argument

From: gts (gts_2000@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Apr 25 2003 - 17:53:27 MDT

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    Ramez Naam wrote:

    > I have a basic rebuttal to the Doomsday argument.
    >
    > The Doomsday argument makes exactly as much sense now as it would have
    > at any past point on Earth. Yet it appears to have been wrong at all
    > of those past points. This casts rather a bit of doubt on its
    > predictive power.
    >
    > Indeed, in any civilization, the Doomsday argument must always seem
    > valid. There is no amount of information that a member of a
    > civilization can possess which will differentiate those times when
    > such a statistical argument is valid from when it's invalid.
    >
    > So in short, given that it the argument will be wrong the vast
    > majority of the time it's used, and /has/ been wrong over the entire
    > history of life on this planet, I see no reason to believe that it's
    > correct now.
    >
    > Is there a flaw in my reasoning?
    >
    > mez

    The problem, theoretically, is that you are not one of those supposed people
    you mention of the distant past who might have in theory considered the
    doomsday argument. Instead you are you and you only. You are Ramez Naam of
    2003, and no one else. You must, at least according to DA theory, accept
    that you, Ramez Naam of 2003, are a single random sample taken from the
    population of all humans ever to live past or present.

    If you are a random sample of all humans past or present, then the
    probability that you are a random human taken from a small population
    destined to go extinct soon is much greater than the probability that you
    are a random human taken from a larger population destined to go forth into
    the cosmos and multiply. If the human species is likely to number over time
    in the 10's of trillions, for example, then the probability of having been
    born in the first 100 billion is pretty low. Therefore having given that you
    have been born in the first 100 billion is pretty good evidence that the
    human species will not end in the 10's of trillions.

    Or so the argument goes.

    -gts

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