The Doomsday Argument seems to be misnamed. It doesn’t predict DOOM—merely the absence of births. For those who expect most future creatures to spread out by growing—rather than by reproducing—an absence of births would not be too surprising. Since that would happen in some of the very best futures, proclamations of DOOM seem to be rather unwarranted.
I disagree. Suppose the reference class was composed only of me. Suppose I’m 20 years old. This is twice as likely to be true if I’m about to die than if I’ll live to be 40.
Put another way, the reference class isn’t people, it’s person-moments.
It is possible that there will be some sort of utility monster that lives slow (it’s as likely to be it in a one year period as you in a one second period) but so insanely happy that it makes up for it.
That assumes senescence—which is roughly equivalent to assuming DOOM.
Sure, if you already know that you will age and die, then you will probably die.
The person-moments version of the argument would seem to apply if you wake up in a box—and don’t have any idea about how old you are—which seems rather unlikely.
I never said anything about aging. You also don’t have to assume you’ll ever die. I’m infinitely more likely to be 20 if I’ll die than if I won’t.
It wouldn’t apply if you don’t know how old you are, as it’s just applying the evidence given by knowing how old you are.
Are you saying it’s only true if you learn how old you are and you didn’t already know? Even if you already knew, there’s still P(you’ll die at 40) and P(you’ll die at 40|you’re 20). The former isn’t really useful in of itself, but it works as a good sanity check. For example, if you insist P(you’ll die eventually|you’re 20) = 50%, you’ll get P(you’ll die eventually) = 0%, along with P(you’re hallucinating that you’re 20) = 0%, etc. There is clearly something wrong here.
I could similarly tell you P(coin lands on heads) = 50%, even though I saw it land on tails, and P(coin lands on heads|I saw it land on tails) = 100%.
Incidentally, you can’t use whatever person you happen to be as a reference class without certain corrections. Also, you need the same corrections if you use descendants of Earth as a reference class.
The Doomsday Argument seems to be misnamed. It doesn’t predict DOOM—merely the absence of births. For those who expect most future creatures to spread out by growing—rather than by reproducing—an absence of births would not be too surprising. Since that would happen in some of the very best futures, proclamations of DOOM seem to be rather unwarranted.
I disagree. Suppose the reference class was composed only of me. Suppose I’m 20 years old. This is twice as likely to be true if I’m about to die than if I’ll live to be 40.
Put another way, the reference class isn’t people, it’s person-moments.
It is possible that there will be some sort of utility monster that lives slow (it’s as likely to be it in a one year period as you in a one second period) but so insanely happy that it makes up for it.
That assumes senescence—which is roughly equivalent to assuming DOOM.
Sure, if you already know that you will age and die, then you will probably die.
The person-moments version of the argument would seem to apply if you wake up in a box—and don’t have any idea about how old you are—which seems rather unlikely.
I never said anything about aging. You also don’t have to assume you’ll ever die. I’m infinitely more likely to be 20 if I’ll die than if I won’t.
It wouldn’t apply if you don’t know how old you are, as it’s just applying the evidence given by knowing how old you are.
Are you saying it’s only true if you learn how old you are and you didn’t already know? Even if you already knew, there’s still P(you’ll die at 40) and P(you’ll die at 40|you’re 20). The former isn’t really useful in of itself, but it works as a good sanity check. For example, if you insist P(you’ll die eventually|you’re 20) = 50%, you’ll get P(you’ll die eventually) = 0%, along with P(you’re hallucinating that you’re 20) = 0%, etc. There is clearly something wrong here.
I could similarly tell you P(coin lands on heads) = 50%, even though I saw it land on tails, and P(coin lands on heads|I saw it land on tails) = 100%.
Incidentally, you can’t use whatever person you happen to be as a reference class without certain corrections. Also, you need the same corrections if you use descendants of Earth as a reference class.