The Doomsday Argument is Reasonable and Mostly Points to Longevity

LessWrong is exploring the Doomsday Argument—a probabilistic thought experiment that sounds ominous but may actually suggest humanity has a lot of future ahead. The concept, originated in nineteen eighty-three, uses a simple principle: if you're probably not special, and you're the median human born so far, then roughly as many people will be born after you as before. Per the analysis, this reasoning applied to historical snapshots yields surprisingly long timelines. A farmer in two thousand BC would have estimated doomsday around two hundred nineteen BC—just sixty lifetimes away. One in one hundred eighty AD would expect the world to last another three thousand years. By twelve hundred AD, the calculation pointed to four thousand two hundred twenty AD—far longer than medieval Christians actually believed. The argument grows most pessimistic when applied to nineteen sixty-five, when exponential population growth was still accelerating, predicting median doomsday near twenty eighty-five. Overall, the author argues the Doomsday Argument, despite its grim name, points more toward longevity than impending doom.

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