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