DOOMSDAY
ARGUMENT
Emanuela Bochiș and Daria Zdrinca
National College ‘Moise Nicoară’ Arad, Romania
TABLE OF CONTENTS
01
02
03
04
DOOM
CARTER’S
DOOM
LESLIE’S
DOOM
GOTT’S
ARGUMENTS
REFUTING
THE DOOMSDAY ARGUMENT
The Doomsday argument (DA) is a probabilistic argument that claims to predict the number of future members of the human species given an estimate of the total number of humans born so far.
CARTER’S
DOOM
01
Brandon Carter
(born 1942), member of the Fellow of the Royal Society, is an Australian theoretical physicist, best known for his work on the Doomsday Argument and on the properties of black holes.
PROBABILITY: BAYES’ THEOREM
LESLIE’S
DOOM
02
John Andrew Leslie (born 1940) is Canadian philosopher and writer, best known for his work on the Doomsday Argument and one of his many books, Universes (1989).
GOTT’S
DOOM
03
(born 1947) is a professor of astrophysical sciences at Princeton University. He is known for his work on time travel and the Doomsday argument. His paper in Nature was also the first to apply the Copernican principle to the survival of humanity.
John Richard Gott
REFUTING ARGUMENTS
04
"The doomsday argument is, we believe, an example of probabilistic reasoning gone astray.”
— JONATHAN OLIVER
and
KEVIN KORB
ARGUMENTS:
Learning the relevant birth rank only has a moderate effect on one's expectation.
The doomsdayers have neglected these preconditions for proper Bayesian reasoning.
01.
02.
CONCLUSION
Even though there are better grounds for worrying about the future than mere numerology, the Doomsday argument forces us to contemplate the possibility that we, and the universe, are more random than we like to think.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION!