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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.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Monday July 08 2019, @06:20PM (1 child)
As you say, not a good or useful argument. Still, I think is predictions are a bit optimistic. I would say that humanity, as we know it, will end within 50 years, certainly by the end of the century. I decline to say whether this will be a good or a bad thing. Also the mode of ending, as some are catastrophic and others are....less so, and arguably desirable.
The modes of ending that I've identified are:
1) war
2) ecological collapse
3) extreme introversion (see "The Machine Stops", and update the technology.)
4) supernormal releasing mechanisms. (Early versions of this include lipstick. Modern versions include porn and FleshLight. Advanced versions are being worked on all over the world.)
5) goodlife. We become pets of an AI. Perhaps one that thinks of itself as benign towards humans, but it won't be the humanity we have known.
I'm sure I've missed some. I think that unfortunately the first two are the most likely.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @09:48AM
Neither war nor ecological collapse will end humanity. They may end civilisation and greatly reduce population, but people are tough and adaptable. There will be survivors.
Life may go back to being "nasty, brutish, and short" but to quote Heinlein "Man is an unspecialized animal. His body is primitive. He can't dig; he can't run very fast; he can't fly. But he can eat anything and he can stay alive where a goat would starve, a lizard would fry, a bird freeze. Instead of special adaptations he has general adaptability"