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by tgb 3732 days ago
FYI, the controversy with the doomsday argument is the distinction between Self-Indication Assumption versus the Self-Sampling Assumption. The question comes down to whether you are a priori more likely to live in a world in which more people exist (over all time) or not. Does the existence of more consciousness make it more likely that you, a 'randomly' chosen consciousness, exists in the first place? If so, then that factor exactly cancels out the doomsday argument. [3]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-indication_assumption [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-sampling_assumption [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Indication_Assumption_Doo...

1 comments

Thanks for the information. Wouldn't the same argument apply to the big alien discussion here?