From: Hal Finney (hal@finney.org)
Date: Sun Jun 01 2003 - 20:39:59 MDT
Harvey writes:
> The Doomsday Argument makes a lot of assumptions to prove its
> point. There is no evidence for those assumptions, and the whole argument
> falls apart if you try to find evidence for the assumptions.
What are some of the assumptions the DA makes to prove its point, for
which there is no evidence?
> Another interesting point is that the Doomsday Argument has been valid for
> every era of humankind, even going back to Neanderthals and ancestral
> monkeys. And it has always been wrong in its prediction every time.
You could say the same thing about the dinosaurs and all of the other
members of the 99% of species that have gone extinct. For each one
of those animals, the DA predicted that about as many of their species
would live after them as lived before them, within an order of magnitude
or so. And it was right for 90% of those individuals.
> Why
> should we suddenly assume that it will become accurate during our era? It
> is like an ancient text carved in stone that says "The End is Near!"
> Eventually, it may become accurate, but not because of any impeccable logic.
In fact, the hypothetical carved text has no logic whatsoever behind it,
it is an unsupported statement. In contrast, the DA does have a chain
of logic that urges its conclusion.
Hal
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