all of their predictions of the end of the world were complete failures.
If they weren’t, we wouldn’t be here to see the failure.
It therefore seems to me that using this to “disprove” an end-of-the-world claim makes as much sense as someone trying to support a theory by saying, “They laughed at Galileo, too!”
IOW, you are simply placing the prediction in a certain outside-view class, without any particular justification. You could just as easily put SIAI claims in the class of “predictions of disaster that were averted by hard work”, and with equal justification. (i.e., none that you’ve given!)
[Note: this comment is neither pro-SIAI nor anti-SIAI, nor any comment on the probability of their claims being in any particular class. I’m merely anti-arguments-that-are-information-free. ;-) ]
The argument is not information free. It is just lower on information than implied. If people had never previously made predictions of disaster and everything else was equal then that tells us a different thing than if humans predicted disaster every day. This is even after considering selection effects. I believe this applies somewhat even considering the possibility of dust.
Uh, it wasn’t given as an “argument” in the first place. Evidence which does more strongly relate to p(DOOM) includes the extent to which we look back and see the ashes of previous failed technological civilisations, and past major mishaps. I go into all this in my DOOM video.
If they weren’t, we wouldn’t be here to see the failure.
It therefore seems to me that using this to “disprove” an end-of-the-world claim makes as much sense as someone trying to support a theory by saying, “They laughed at Galileo, too!”
IOW, you are simply placing the prediction in a certain outside-view class, without any particular justification. You could just as easily put SIAI claims in the class of “predictions of disaster that were averted by hard work”, and with equal justification. (i.e., none that you’ve given!)
[Note: this comment is neither pro-SIAI nor anti-SIAI, nor any comment on the probability of their claims being in any particular class. I’m merely anti-arguments-that-are-information-free. ;-) ]
The argument is not information free. It is just lower on information than implied. If people had never previously made predictions of disaster and everything else was equal then that tells us a different thing than if humans predicted disaster every day. This is even after considering selection effects. I believe this applies somewhat even considering the possibility of dust.
Uh, it wasn’t given as an “argument” in the first place. Evidence which does more strongly relate to p(DOOM) includes the extent to which we look back and see the ashes of previous failed technological civilisations, and past major mishaps. I go into all this in my DOOM video.