4 ms·

“Since it is equally likely that those of us living today are in the first or second half of all past and future human births...” Something about this predicat

“Since it is equally likely that those of us living today are in the first or second half of all past and future human births...” Something about this predicate seems suspect. I can understand the reasoning, but it seems like we’re mixing two separate domains of probability to arrive at the conclusion, much like the common wrong answer to the Monty Hall problem.

RodgerTheGreat 7y ago
One key problem with the premise is the assumption that your (lack of) priors indicate a flat distribution. It sounds reasonable at face-value, but in the bayesian framework it is actually a rather strong assumption that can be leveraged to arrive at far less reasonable conclusions.
- pessimizer 7y ago
  It's a credible sounding way to sneak in the law of averages. edit: it only works for German tanks because you can reasonably assume that the Germans aren't warehousing significantly more tanks than you've seen.
  - ex3xu 7y ago
    In lieu of German Tank serial numbers, Gott's original paper uses projections from Ehrlich and Ehrlich's 1990 Population Explosion paper that the world's population will top out at around 10 billion, then essentially cause a dumpster fire and crash and burn. Obviously extremely speculative stuff that's been sensationalized here.
    - AstralStorm 7y ago
      Why the dumpster fire and crash though instead of stability or expansion into space for example? Seems like a silly guess. Plus bad climate and famines and wars can stop it much earlier than those 10 billion.
      - ex3xu 7y ago
        I can't get past the paywall to read the original Population Explosion paper that Gott uses, but the dumpster fire premise seems to comes from the assumption of tragedy-of-the-commons-style environmental degradation. The Wikipedia on Ehrlich offers the following comment: > When is an area overpopulated? When its population can't be maintained without rapidly depleting nonrenewable resources (or converting renewable resources into nonrenewable ones) and without degrading the capacity of the environment to support the population. In short, if the long-term carrying capacity of an area is clearly being degraded by its current human occupants, that area is overpopulated. I agree with you that it is questionable set of assumptions, though I think when considering some of issues humanity is facing in the realm of climate change and water shortages, it's not an entirely untenable hypothesis.
deleted 7y ago
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RodgerTheGreat 7y ago

One key problem with the premise is the assumption that your (lack of) priors indicate a flat distribution. It sounds reasonable at face-value, but in the bayesian framework it is actually a rather strong assumption that can be leveraged to arrive at far less reasonable conclusions.

pessimizer 7y ago
It's a credible sounding way to sneak in the law of averages. edit: it only works for German tanks because you can reasonably assume that the Germans aren't warehousing significantly more tanks than you've seen.
- ex3xu 7y ago
  In lieu of German Tank serial numbers, Gott's original paper uses projections from Ehrlich and Ehrlich's 1990 Population Explosion paper that the world's population will top out at around 10 billion, then essentially cause a dumpster fire and crash and burn. Obviously extremely speculative stuff that's been sensationalized here.
  - AstralStorm 7y ago
    Why the dumpster fire and crash though instead of stability or expansion into space for example? Seems like a silly guess. Plus bad climate and famines and wars can stop it much earlier than those 10 billion.
    - ex3xu 7y ago
      I can't get past the paywall to read the original Population Explosion paper that Gott uses, but the dumpster fire premise seems to comes from the assumption of tragedy-of-the-commons-style environmental degradation. The Wikipedia on Ehrlich offers the following comment: > When is an area overpopulated? When its population can't be maintained without rapidly depleting nonrenewable resources (or converting renewable resources into nonrenewable ones) and without degrading the capacity of the environment to support the population. In short, if the long-term carrying capacity of an area is clearly being degraded by its current human occupants, that area is overpopulated. I agree with you that it is questionable set of assumptions, though I think when considering some of issues humanity is facing in the realm of climate change and water shortages, it's not an entirely untenable hypothesis.

deleted 7y ago

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