The argument a) depends on you being a random observer and b) makes only a statistical prediction. If you are one of those early or late observers you will come to the wrong conclusions. Probability doesn’t help you at that point at all.
Also: Once you start creating more and more variants of the the same pattern (double DA, other time frames) you don’t really make the probability worse, you are doing p-hacking. That doesn’t change reality and you can’t reliably learn anything about reality.
I might be in a simulation and such checks might change my prior for it but it is quite low anyway. Like so many other strange and newfangled ways reality could be like theistic.
Yes it’s a statistical prediction. The 90% confidence interval will be correct for 90% of people who use this method. 10% will be wrong. Apriori you are 9 times more likely to be in the first group than in the second.
Once you start creating more and more variants of the the same pattern (double DA, other time frames) you don’t really make the probability worse, you are doing p-hacking.
I don’t see this as an alternative variant to fudge the numbers. To me this seems to be the correct way to do the calculation. This makes the above argument correct, that 90% of people that use this argument will be correct.
Whereas the original version assumes you are randomly given human, which is obviously incorrect. As most humans would not be born at a time where this kind of statistical knowledge exists. Just the fact that you ask the doomsday argument, shows there is something special about you, and puts you into a different reference class.
Because as I said, most humans would never even think of the doomsday argument. So the argument can’t apply to them. In order to get the mathematical guarantee that 90% of people who use the argument will be correct, you need to restrict your reference class only to people familiar with the argument.
More generally, the copernican principle is that there is nothing particularly special about this exact moment in time. But we know there is something special. The modern world is very different than the ancient world. The probability of these ideas occurring to an ancient person, are very different than to a modern person. And so any anthropic reasoning should adjust for that probability.
“The probability of these ideas occurring to an ancient person...”
In the ancient world it was very common to predict the imminent end of the world.
And in my own case, before ever having heard of the Doomsday argument, the argument occurred to me exactly in the context of thinking about the possible end of the world.
So it doesn’t seem particularly unlikely to occur to an ancient person.
That’s what I thought you meant. But Christianity has existed for less than 4% of humanity’s time, and what we ordinarily call “the ancient world” started 3000-6000 years earlier.
Double negatives exist to help hide what you’re saying. If it’s somewhat likely, show me a single clear example that predates Christianity. The story of Noah says such a flood will never happen again. The Kali Yuga was supposed to last more than 400000 years.
There two possible ways to try to rebut the DA which is using those who knows about DA as a reference class, but they still don’t work (copying my comment from similar thread about the Universe origin):
A. One possible counterargument here is following. Imagine that any being has rank X, proportional to its complexity (or year of birth). But there will be infinitely many beings which are 10X complex, 100X complex and so on. So any being with finite complexity is in the beginning of the complexity ladder. So any may be surprised if it is very early. So there is no surprise to be surprised.
But we are still should be in the middle of infinity, but our situation is not so—it looks like we have just enough complexity to start to understand the problem, which is still surprising.
B. Another similar rebuttal: imagine all being which are surprised by their position. The fact that we are in this set is resulted only from definition of the set, but not from any properties of the whole Universe. Example: All people who was born 1 January may be surpised that their birthday coincide with New Year, but it doesn’t provide them any information about length of the year.
But my birthday is randomly position inside the years (September) and in most testable cases mediocracy logic works as predicted.
“In most testable cases mediocracy logic works as predicted.”
Exactly, but it doesn’t need testing anyway, because we know that it is mathematically necessary. That is why I think the DA is true, and the fact that everyone tries to refute it just shows wishful thinking.
(And by the way, my birthday is in late June and would work well to predict the length of the year. And my current age is almost exactly half of the current average lifespan of a human.)
But QI favours the worlds there I am more able survive, so may be I will have some kinds of superpowers or will be uploaded. So I will probably able to create several friends, but not many, as it would change probability distribution in DA, and so makes this outcome less probable.
Another option is put me in the situation where my life or death is univocally connected with live of group of people (e.g. if we all in one submarine). In with case we will all survive.
This interpretation of DA puts you in the class of really intelligent observers, who are able to understand statistic, logic etc.
It helps us to solve so called reference class problem in most natural way.
It helps to exclude animals, unborn children, Neanderthals from the class of beings from which we are randomly chosen.
Unfortunately it shortens most probable time of existence of our class.
The argument a) depends on you being a random observer and b) makes only a statistical prediction. If you are one of those early or late observers you will come to the wrong conclusions. Probability doesn’t help you at that point at all.
Also: Once you start creating more and more variants of the the same pattern (double DA, other time frames) you don’t really make the probability worse, you are doing p-hacking. That doesn’t change reality and you can’t reliably learn anything about reality.
I might be in a simulation and such checks might change my prior for it but it is quite low anyway. Like so many other strange and newfangled ways reality could be like theistic.
Yes it’s a statistical prediction. The 90% confidence interval will be correct for 90% of people who use this method. 10% will be wrong. Apriori you are 9 times more likely to be in the first group than in the second.
I don’t see this as an alternative variant to fudge the numbers. To me this seems to be the correct way to do the calculation. This makes the above argument correct, that 90% of people that use this argument will be correct.
Whereas the original version assumes you are randomly given human, which is obviously incorrect. As most humans would not be born at a time where this kind of statistical knowledge exists. Just the fact that you ask the doomsday argument, shows there is something special about you, and puts you into a different reference class.
Why?
Because as I said, most humans would never even think of the doomsday argument. So the argument can’t apply to them. In order to get the mathematical guarantee that 90% of people who use the argument will be correct, you need to restrict your reference class only to people familiar with the argument.
More generally, the copernican principle is that there is nothing particularly special about this exact moment in time. But we know there is something special. The modern world is very different than the ancient world. The probability of these ideas occurring to an ancient person, are very different than to a modern person. And so any anthropic reasoning should adjust for that probability.
“The probability of these ideas occurring to an ancient person...”
In the ancient world it was very common to predict the imminent end of the world.
And in my own case, before ever having heard of the Doomsday argument, the argument occurred to me exactly in the context of thinking about the possible end of the world.
So it doesn’t seem particularly unlikely to occur to an ancient person.
How so?
See the Gospels for examples.
That’s what I thought you meant. But Christianity has existed for less than 4% of humanity’s time, and what we ordinarily call “the ancient world” started 3000-6000 years earlier.
On the other hand fear of and end of the world (as they knew it) seems to be not unlikely at any time.
Creating reference classes as small as you like is easy. But the predictive power diminishes accordingly...
Double negatives exist to help hide what you’re saying. If it’s somewhat likely, show me a single clear example that predates Christianity. The story of Noah says such a flood will never happen again. The Kali Yuga was supposed to last more than 400000 years.
There two possible ways to try to rebut the DA which is using those who knows about DA as a reference class, but they still don’t work (copying my comment from similar thread about the Universe origin):
A. One possible counterargument here is following. Imagine that any being has rank X, proportional to its complexity (or year of birth). But there will be infinitely many beings which are 10X complex, 100X complex and so on. So any being with finite complexity is in the beginning of the complexity ladder. So any may be surprised if it is very early. So there is no surprise to be surprised.
But we are still should be in the middle of infinity, but our situation is not so—it looks like we have just enough complexity to start to understand the problem, which is still surprising.
B. Another similar rebuttal: imagine all being which are surprised by their position. The fact that we are in this set is resulted only from definition of the set, but not from any properties of the whole Universe. Example: All people who was born 1 January may be surpised that their birthday coincide with New Year, but it doesn’t provide them any information about length of the year.
But my birthday is randomly position inside the years (September) and in most testable cases mediocracy logic works as predicted.
“In most testable cases mediocracy logic works as predicted.”
Exactly, but it doesn’t need testing anyway, because we know that it is mathematically necessary. That is why I think the DA is true, and the fact that everyone tries to refute it just shows wishful thinking.
(And by the way, my birthday is in late June and would work well to predict the length of the year. And my current age is almost exactly half of the current average lifespan of a human.)
I agree about wishful thinking.
Ok, but what if your were Omega, how you could try to escape from DA curse?
One way is to reset own clock, or to reduce number of people to 1, so DA will work, but willnot result in total extinction.
Another way is to hope that some another strange thing like quantum immortality will help “me” to survive.
Wouldn’t that mean surviving alone?
Looks like alone ((( not nice.
But QI favours the worlds there I am more able survive, so may be I will have some kinds of superpowers or will be uploaded. So I will probably able to create several friends, but not many, as it would change probability distribution in DA, and so makes this outcome less probable.
Another option is put me in the situation where my life or death is univocally connected with live of group of people (e.g. if we all in one submarine). In with case we will all survive.
This interpretation of DA puts you in the class of really intelligent observers, who are able to understand statistic, logic etc. It helps us to solve so called reference class problem in most natural way. It helps to exclude animals, unborn children, Neanderthals from the class of beings from which we are randomly chosen.
Unfortunately it shortens most probable time of existence of our class.