I am sure of the predictive value of the doomsday argument, but I’m not sure of the predictive value of virtually anything else. Exactly how sure can you be that your thought experiments aren’t biased? The galaxy can support about 10^40 people. If there’s only a one in ten billion chance of being wrong, it’s an expected 10^30 people. And that’s not even getting into the fact that the laws of thermodynamics might be wrong.
I am sure of the predictive value of the doomsday argument, but I’m not sure of the predictive value of virtually anything else. Exactly how sure can you be that your thought experiments aren’t biased? The galaxy can support about 10^40 people. If there’s only a one in ten billion chance of being wrong, it’s an expected 10^30 people. And that’s not even getting into the fact that the laws of thermodynamics might be wrong.