The Doomsday Argument presupposes that we are drawn from a probability distribution over time as well as space—which I am not sure that I believe, though it might be true. I think we probably experience time sequentially across “draws” as well as within draws, assuming that there are multiple draws.
(I lean towards there being multiple draws, I don’t see why there would only be one, since consciousness seems pretty fundamental to me and likely something that just “is” for any given moment in time. But some might consider this to be too spiritualistic; I’d retort that I consider annihilation to be too spiritualistic as well.)
I do think we are probably drawn from a distribution that weights something like “consciousness mass” proportional to probability mass. So, chances are you are probably going to be one of the smartest things around. This is pretty good news if true—it should mean, among other things, that there probably aren’t really large civilizations in the universe with huge populations of much smarter beings.
The Doomsday Argument presupposes that we are drawn from a probability distribution over time as well as space—which I am not sure that I believe, though it might be true. I think we probably experience time sequentially across “draws” as well as within draws, assuming that there are multiple draws.
(I lean towards there being multiple draws, I don’t see why there would only be one, since consciousness seems pretty fundamental to me and likely something that just “is” for any given moment in time. But some might consider this to be too spiritualistic; I’d retort that I consider annihilation to be too spiritualistic as well.)
I do think we are probably drawn from a distribution that weights something like “consciousness mass” proportional to probability mass. So, chances are you are probably going to be one of the smartest things around. This is pretty good news if true—it should mean, among other things, that there probably aren’t really large civilizations in the universe with huge populations of much smarter beings.