Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Bookmarks and Doomsday

Author:Sidney Markowitz
Posted:8/16/2000; 8:21:35 PM
Topic:scriptingNews outline for 8/13/2000
Msg #:19764 (In response to 19755)
Prev/Next:19763 / 19765

I followed the links and here is the one argument I find most convincing that the Doomsday argument is a crock:

Yet despite being subjected to intense scrutiny by a growing number of philosophers, no generally convincing refutation has yet been formulated

The arguments on both sides sound like philosophers.

No matter how complicated the statistical explanation, if the conclusion is that knowledge of one's present existence can affect the probability that some future event will wipe out humanity it has to be plain wrong.

I saw lots of discussion back and forth about what is the correct total population to use in the calculations of probabilities, with some conjecture that perhaps it should include not just future humanity but all hypothetical present a future sentient beings in the Galaxy or the Universe. But nobody pointed out that the only population that exists is the one that does. The probability that you are a member of the set of people that have existed up until now is one. The probability that you are a member of the set of people that don't exist is 0. That means there is no added information gained from determining that you exist.

The analogy of the rooms should be like this: Imagine there are 100 rooms numbered 1 to 100 and there are people in the first 10 rooms, one of them you. Somehow you know that there is a 95% chance that in the future the rest of the rooms will be populated and a 5% chance that there will never be more than 10. You open the door and see you are in room number 7. Given that knowledge, what do you now know about the probability that sometime in the future there will be people in the remaining 90 rooms? Of course the answer is you know nothing more about that than you did before.

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