But basically, yes, I agree completely. I’m not convinced even by this version of the Doomsday Argument, not because I have a refutation to hand, but because the track record of this kind of philosophical reasoning in actually producing right answers is probably worse than random chance; that having been said, I can believe it could be valid, and that most intelligent species end up hamstringing themselves in the name of safety and spending all their energy on bickering about intra-species politics until their time runs out.
I have! http://lesswrong.com/lw/10n/why_safety_is_not_safe/
But basically, yes, I agree completely. I’m not convinced even by this version of the Doomsday Argument, not because I have a refutation to hand, but because the track record of this kind of philosophical reasoning in actually producing right answers is probably worse than random chance; that having been said, I can believe it could be valid, and that most intelligent species end up hamstringing themselves in the name of safety and spending all their energy on bickering about intra-species politics until their time runs out.