I can treat the place I was born as random relative to its latitude = 59N. I ignore everything I know about population distribution and spherical geometry and ask a question: assuming that I was born in the middle of all latitudes, what is the highest possible latitude? It will be double of my latitude, or 118 - which is reasonably close to real answer 90.
From this I conclude that I can use information about my location as a random sample and use it for some predictions about the things I can’t observe.
If you use this logic not for the latitude your are born in but for your birth rank among human beings, then you get the Doomsday argument.
To me the latitude argument is even more problematic as it involves problems such as linearity. But in any case I am not convinced of this line of reasoning.
P.S. 59N is really-really high. Anyway if your use that information and make predictions about where humans are born generally latitude-wise it will be way-way off.
We can experimentally test this.
I can treat the place I was born as random relative to its latitude = 59N. I ignore everything I know about population distribution and spherical geometry and ask a question: assuming that I was born in the middle of all latitudes, what is the highest possible latitude? It will be double of my latitude, or 118 - which is reasonably close to real answer 90.
From this I conclude that I can use information about my location as a random sample and use it for some predictions about the things I can’t observe.
If you use this logic not for the latitude your are born in but for your birth rank among human beings, then you get the Doomsday argument.
To me the latitude argument is even more problematic as it involves problems such as linearity. But in any case I am not convinced of this line of reasoning.
P.S. 59N is really-really high. Anyway if your use that information and make predictions about where humans are born generally latitude-wise it will be way-way off.