It seems understressed that the doomsday argument is as an argument about max entropy priors, and that any evidence can change this significantly.
Yes, you should expect with p = 2⁄3 to be in the last 2⁄3 of people alive. Yes, if you wake up and learn that there have only been tens of billions of people alive but expect most people to live in universes that have more people, you can update again and feel a bit relieved.
However, once you know how to think straight about the subject, you need to be able to update on the rest of the evidence.
If we’ve never seen an existential threat and would expect to see several before getting wiped out, then we can expect to last longer. However, if we have evidence that there are some big ones coming up, and that we don’t know how to handle them, it’s time to do worry more than the doomsday argument tells you to.
It seems understressed that the doomsday argument is as an argument about max entropy priors, and that any evidence can change this significantly.
Yes, you should expect with p = 2⁄3 to be in the last 2⁄3 of people alive. Yes, if you wake up and learn that there have only been tens of billions of people alive but expect most people to live in universes that have more people, you can update again and feel a bit relieved.
However, once you know how to think straight about the subject, you need to be able to update on the rest of the evidence.
If we’ve never seen an existential threat and would expect to see several before getting wiped out, then we can expect to last longer. However, if we have evidence that there are some big ones coming up, and that we don’t know how to handle them, it’s time to do worry more than the doomsday argument tells you to.