Doomsday Inference

Can we use probability theory to estimate how many people there will be throughout the whole human history? Sure. We can build a probability model, that takes into account birth rates, possible existential hazards, ways to mitigate them and multiple other factors. Such models tend not to be very precise, so we would have pretty large confidence intervals but, we would still have some estimate.

Hmm... this sounds like a lot of work for not much of a result. Can't we just use the incredible psychic powers of anthropics to circumvent all that, and get a very confident estimate just from the fact that we exist? Consider this:

Suppose that there are two indistinguishable possibilities: a short human history, in which there are only 100 billion people and a long human history, in whichthere are 100 trillion people. You happen to be born among the 6th 10-billion [...]

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Outline:

(00:05) Doomsday Inference

(02:45) Biting the Doomsday Bullet

(05:05) Biting the Infinity Bullet

(07:56) False Anthropic Dilemma

(09:17) Third Alternative

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First published:

Source:

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.