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posted by martyb on Monday July 08 2019, @11:58AM   Printer-friendly
from the I've-still-got-plenty-of-time dept.

A math equation that predicts the end of humanity:

The most mind-boggling controversy in the contemporary philosophy of science is the "doomsday argument," a claim that a mathematical formula can predict how long the human race will survive. It gives us even odds that our species will meet its end within the next 760 years.

The doomsday argument doesn't tell what's going to kill us — it just gives the date (very, very approximately).

Yet, I [William Poundstone] now believe the doomsday prediction merits serious attention — I've written my latest book about it. Start with J. Richard Gott III. He's a Princeton astrophysicist, one of several scholars who independently formulated the doomsday argument in the last decades of the 20th century. (Others are physicists Holger Bech Nielsen and Brandon Carter and philosopher John Leslie.) In 1969, Gott was a physics undergraduate fresh out of Harvard, spending the summer in Europe. At a visit to the Berlin Wall, he did a quick calculation and announced to a friend: The Berlin Wall will stand at least 2 and 2/3 more years but no more than 24 more years.

Demolition on the wall began 21 years later. This motivated Gott to write his method up. He published it in the journal Nature in 1993. There, Gott wrote of the future of humanity itself. He forecast a 95 percent chance that the human race would cease to exist within 12 to 18,000 years.

Not all Nature readers were convinced. "'There are lies, damn lies and statistics' is one of those colourful phrases that bedevil poor workaday statisticians," biostatistician Steven N. Goodman complained in a letter to Nature. "In my view, the statistical methodology of Gott ... breathes unfortunate new life into the saying."

Yet Gott and his predictions also received favorable attention in the[sic] New York Times[*] and the[sic] New Yorker[*] (where a profile of Gott was titled "How to Predict Everything"). Gott is an engaging storyteller with a Kentucky accent that's survived decades in the Ivy League. He has become a sort of scientific soothsayer, successfully predicting the runs of Broadway plays and when the Chicago White Sox would again win the World Series (they did in 2005).

Can it really be that easy to predict "everything"? It quickly became clear that 1) most scholars believe the doomsday argument is wrong, and 2) there is no consensus on why it's wrong. To this day, Gott's method, and a related one developed by Carter and Leslie, inspire a lively stream of journal articles.

You can read more about the doomsday debate on Quora

[*] The name of these publications do include the word "the" and should, therefore, be capitalized: The New York Times and The New Yorker, respectively.


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by ElizabethGreene on Monday July 08 2019, @04:27PM (4 children)

    by ElizabethGreene (6748) Subscriber Badge on Monday July 08 2019, @04:27PM (#864559) Journal

    My capitalistic 0.1 percent masters have made it so I can cross a half a day's foot travel in only 10 minutes to visit a store that contains more food, goods, and services than I could consume in an entire lifetime and I can pay for more than I need working less than eight hours per day in an air conditioned office while browsing soylentnews.

    Long live the capitalistic 0.1 percent. Subsistence farming is for noobs.

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  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 08 2019, @04:55PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 08 2019, @04:55PM (#864568)

    they made a nice job turning you into a slave with no memory

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by acid andy on Monday July 08 2019, @05:04PM (1 child)

    by acid andy (1683) on Monday July 08 2019, @05:04PM (#864572) Homepage Journal

    You're just one of the lucky ones. Enjoy it while it lasts.

    --
    If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 08 2019, @08:05PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 08 2019, @08:05PM (#864672)

      LOL [humanprogress.org]

  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 08 2019, @10:26PM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday July 08 2019, @10:26PM (#864727) Journal

    My capitalistic 0.1 percent masters have made it so I can cross a half a day's foot travel in only 10 minutes to visit a store that contains more food, goods, and services than I could consume in an entire lifetime and I can pay for more than I need working less than eight hours per day in an air conditioned office while browsing soylentnews.

    Huh, posting on S/N! See? Their predecessors dumbed you down alright

    But fear not, Amazon to the rescue - they started small with the work conditions in their houses and are busy now putting the brick-and-mortar shops to an end. Once they get most of this job done, they'll direct their attention to you and your kind. (large grin)

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford