RE: Doomsday vs Diaspora

From: Keith Elis (hagbard@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Tue Apr 29 2003 - 14:19:34 MDT

  • Next message: Lee Daniel Crocker: "Re: Experiences with Atkins diet"

    I've finally had time to sit and think about Mitch's post:

    > 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.

    Bostrom calls reasoning from the class of all 'intelligent entitites' a
    loophole in the DA; it sounds to me like more than that. Either way,
    this argument can be extended to apply to any type of civilization in
    which the resultant total of intelligent entities vastly outnumbers
    those of the Doomsday civs. For one, such an argument might update
    priors about the probability that we live in a simulation. The number of
    software entities with human intelligence is limited only by processing
    and storage capacity and would surely dwarf anything a Diaspora civ
    could muster. By this line of thought, it is far more likely that we are
    living in a simulation than in a Diaspora civ, both of which are far
    more likely than Doomsday.

    Keith



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Apr 29 2003 - 14:29:34 MDT