One reason I’m not convinced by the Doomsday argument is that it’s equally true at all points in history—you could make the same argument 2,000 years ago to the Greeks or 10,000 years into the future (well, only if Doomsday isn’t really imminent) and the basic logic would still hold. I find it hard to be convinced by an argument that will always come to the same conclusion at any point in history, even though the argument is that we’re most likely to exist at the point that it’s true.
The problem with the analogy is that the urn is continuously filling with balls with higher and higher numbers, so pulling out one number at any point in the process tells you nothing about the future number of balls in the urn. That would require analysis of the urn and the ball-dropping mechanism.
For this reason, I find concrete existential risks much more convincing than the Doomsday argument.
One reason I’m not convinced by the Doomsday argument is that it’s equally true at all points in history—you could make the same argument 2,000 years ago to the Greeks or 10,000 years into the future (well, only if Doomsday isn’t really imminent) and the basic logic would still hold. I find it hard to be convinced by an argument that will always come to the same conclusion at any point in history, even though the argument is that we’re most likely to exist at the point that it’s true.
The problem with the analogy is that the urn is continuously filling with balls with higher and higher numbers, so pulling out one number at any point in the process tells you nothing about the future number of balls in the urn. That would require analysis of the urn and the ball-dropping mechanism.
For this reason, I find concrete existential risks much more convincing than the Doomsday argument.