crocodile deathroll

This is some kind of "I hope I am wrong" theory

Although I do not find the strong version of the "strong anthropic principle' (SAP) as it smacks more of new age Theosophy than true science. However I do strongly subscribe to the weak version or the "weak anthropic principle (WAP)
Here are a couple of links I have made on the topic and I feel it is extremely relevant because it is base more of probability than absolute truth.
The <a href="http://24.86.132.253/090101/feature/feature.htm" target="_blank">Doomsday Argument </a> Particular got me thinking if you imagine a maternity hospital that grew over the years into a very large and successful institution before it was destroyed in a terrorist attack.
You know there was a birth data base that was stored elsewhere but none of the births were put into chronological order. All you know is in the first year 2 babies were born then next 4 babies the next years 8 babies, and the numbers just kept doubling every year until the hospital was destroyed by the terrorists 20 years later. Then out of the entire data base you just picked one baby's name at random out of a hat. Then you would be highly unlikely although it may be remotely possible that baby could of been one of those 2 born in the first year, but it would be more probable that you were one one the thousands born, about a year of two before the hospital's destruction.

The Earth analogous to that maternity hospital. So it would be more probable that you would be born when the Earth's population had swelled in very large numbers than then just been born as one of few hunter gatherers in the stone age, but the human race becomes extinct as a result of a nuclear holocaust after say he year 2100 then you would not be born then.

I will just leave these two links with you to set all thinking

<a href="http://www.anthropic-principle.com" target="_blank"> anthropic-principle </a>

<a href="http://24.86.132.253/090101/feature/feature.htm" target="_blank">Doomsday Argument </a>

Laurentius

AVE

I, for one, act as if tomorrow were the last day of my life anyway.

Now, with the Doomsday Argument, which must have at least rudimentarily occurred to anyone here, how should I behave? Continue to fight the Nihilism that is consuming me at night and struggle to serve Humanism during the day time, as if nothing had happened.

AVE

Hans

Would not the argument be equally valid today, a million years ago, and a billion years from now?

If so, is not the likeliness of eminent doom {per the argument's premises} no more likely now than it is at any other point in time.

[ June 30, 2002: Message edited by: Hans ]</p>

Laurentius

If so, is not the likeliness of eminent doom no more likely now than it is at any other point in time.


Well, not exactly.

Some catastrophic event will destroy our civilization one day, and another cataclysm (if not the same one) will put an end to man's existence on earth. Probabilistically, with every day that passes by, we, as a species, have better chances to winess one of these two moments.

AVE

Hans

I conceed the above. But the above is not the premise of the doomsday argument.

beausoleil

Like many people who've come across the 'doomsday' argument, I've often thought there was something fishy about it. However, I've not read much of the literature. For instance...

Reformulate the argument into the form 'of those people who formulate the doomsday argument, what are their chances of being among the first 60 billion human beings in each scenario'. I would argue that in scenario 2, the likelihood of extermination of the species after at least one self sustaining colony has been established is sufficiently small that a doomsday argument would not be formulated. Thus, people who formulate a doomsday argument are concentrated in the first couple of hundred billion even if humanity goes on to colonise the galaxy.

[ June 30, 2002: Message edited by: beausoleil ]</p>

crocodile deathroll

I will take a alternative view to the doomsday argument.
The lets assume there will not be a doomsday but something of a similar effect on us like a technological utopia. The working human population in the future may be replaced with more efficient robots. This is kind of happening already as there are no longer a huge army of laborers working cotton fields like there used to be.
We can use technology two ways, either we can use it to destroy ourselves with nuclear weapons or we can use it to sustain a very small human population on Earth in a place called Technotopia which may last thousands of years but in spite of all our technology we will never find a new Earth in the cosmos to colonize so instead we will degenerate back into the stone age and a few stragglers very late in human history will be eventually rendered extinct a million years in the future. The net sum of all the people that will ever and have ever lived will still be around 400 billion people, which is only about twice the number as the human race prior to a future nuclear holocaust.

Autonemesis

Never mind.

[ July 02, 2002: Message edited by: Kind Bud ]

[ July 02, 2002: Message edited by: Kind Bud ]</p>

John Page

Interesting topic. To be valid it requires the suppositions to be true. The suppositions seem to include "all possible universes exist" which then gives license to draw all sorts of conclusions.

I like the concept that we should be mindful of things we have not yet discovered, indeed that should help us to survive beyond real doomsday events. Our imaginations need to run wild at times to explore the as yet "unthought".

It seems to me, though, that the Doomsday argument is very big on effect and short on cause. The odds of survival seem so much better with a good method for predicting and combating significant threats.

The weak anthropic principle strikes me as embodying what we already know - our very means of perception lead us to assume intentionality in things. The strong principle implodes back into idealism.

Assuming it were done well enough, would theists look for the god that created croc o' death's robots?

Cheers, John

Synaesthesia

This topic came up on another BB and a very interesting link came up:

<a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v21/n13/gree2113.htm" target="_blank">http://www.lrb.co.uk/v21/n13/gree2113.htm</a>

I think the author of it quite effectively destorys the doomsday argument. Anyone who is at all convinced by it should visit the above link.

"Even if someone who merely happens to live at a particular time could legitimately be treated as random with respect to birth rank, the Doomsday Argument would still fail, since, regardless of when that someone's position in human history is observed, he will always be in the same position relative to Doom Soon and Doom Delayed... That the person selected is alive at the starting point is an inevitable artefact of the procedure, and thus cannot affect the probabilities of the hypotheses."