I haven’t done significant research into the Doomsday argument, but I do remember thinking it seemed intuitively plausible when I first heard of it. Then I listened to this 80,000 Hours podcast , and the discussion on the doomsday argument, if I remember correctly, convinced me it’s a non-issue. But you may want to relisted to make sure I’m remembering correctly. correction: I was not remembering correctly. They came away with the conclusion that more funding & research is needed in this space.
There may be good work to be done on formalizing the puzzle, and proving beyond a doubt that the logic doesn’t hold.
I had the opposite takeaway from the podcast. Ajeya and Rob definitely don’t come to a confident conclusion. Near the end of the segment, Ajeya says, referring definitely to the simulation argument but also I think to anthropics generally,
I would definitely be interested in funding people who want to think about this. I think it is really deeply neglected. It might be the most neglected global prioritisation question relative to its importance. There’s at least two people thinking about AI timelines, but zero people [thinking about simulation/anthropics], basically. Except for Paul in his spare time, I guess.
I haven’t done significant research into the Doomsday argument, but I do remember thinking it seemed intuitively plausible when I first heard of it. Then I listened to this 80,000 Hours podcast , and the discussion on the doomsday argument, if I remember correctly,
convinced me it’s a non-issue. But you may want to relisted to make sure I’m remembering correctly. correction: I was not remembering correctly. They came away with the conclusion that more funding & research is needed in this space.There may be good work to be done on formalizing the puzzle, and proving beyond a doubt that the logic doesn’t hold.
I had the opposite takeaway from the podcast. Ajeya and Rob definitely don’t come to a confident conclusion. Near the end of the segment, Ajeya says, referring definitely to the simulation argument but also I think to anthropics generally,
Ah, thanks. It was a while ago, so I guess I was misremembering.