Hm, I thought this was going to be a simpler reply when I first clicked “Reply.”
I’ma think about it for a bit.
Edit: So, the doomsday argument is basically our prior for the future of humanity that we then build off of when we get new evidence. So taking into account that the Doomsday reference class is “ordered objects,” we can evaluate whether the most important-seeming extra info we know will be positive or negative.
Among ordered objects, do they have a brighter or darker future if they’re alive? Marginally darker. Do they have a brighter or darker future if they’re intelligent? Way brighter. Do they have a brighter or darker future if they’ve invented rocket ships? Brighter, though not independent from that “intelligent “bit.
Someone determined to keep the mystery of Doomsday alive might say “but how can we know that rocket ships are a good thing for our survival?” To them I say: consider the orange roughy, or the polio virus. Does it seem that they are a species particularly in trouble? On the verge of extinction, despite their extremely long history? Are they going to die, probably, sooner than the Doomsday prior would predict? Well—if we can get evidence that a species is about to die, it stands to reason that we can also get evidence of the opposite.
I think I see what you’re saying about fuzzy classes yielding fuzzy results, and that doesn’t mean that the results are invalid.
In your opinion, how would the extra information (that we’re self-replicating, and whatever else) affect the argument?
Hm, I thought this was going to be a simpler reply when I first clicked “Reply.”
I’ma think about it for a bit.
Edit: So, the doomsday argument is basically our prior for the future of humanity that we then build off of when we get new evidence. So taking into account that the Doomsday reference class is “ordered objects,” we can evaluate whether the most important-seeming extra info we know will be positive or negative.
Among ordered objects, do they have a brighter or darker future if they’re alive? Marginally darker. Do they have a brighter or darker future if they’re intelligent? Way brighter. Do they have a brighter or darker future if they’ve invented rocket ships? Brighter, though not independent from that “intelligent “bit.
Someone determined to keep the mystery of Doomsday alive might say “but how can we know that rocket ships are a good thing for our survival?” To them I say: consider the orange roughy, or the polio virus. Does it seem that they are a species particularly in trouble? On the verge of extinction, despite their extremely long history? Are they going to die, probably, sooner than the Doomsday prior would predict? Well—if we can get evidence that a species is about to die, it stands to reason that we can also get evidence of the opposite.