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That would mean there will exist a factor million (or even much higher) more human lives in the future, than there have been so far. But then, that would mean

That would mean there will exist a factor million (or even much higher) more human lives in the future, than there have been so far. But then, that would mean we are among the "one-in-one-millionth earliest" humans, which is a very improbable position to find yourself in. We don't actually know what the future holds. But if we have to guess, it is more likely that we are in a typical case. E.g. if you buy a lottery ticket, it is more reasonable to assume that you are not going to win anything, than to assume you are in the one-in-a-million case (holding the ticket that will win). Applying that logic to our current situation, the reasonable assumption would be that we are close to the peak of human civilization. That's why we find ourselves here, and not in the distant future among a population of quadrillions.

317070 4y ago
I have never understood this type of argument. Even in my regular life, I am atypical in more than one one-in-a-million way. I was born in a tiny city, population less than 1000. But following your line of reasoning, that is sufficient argument that the population of the world is less than 1 billion. It is fine to say "we don't know". Events in which you are in a one-in-a-million situation will be rare, but unless you know the number of events in consideration, there are few conclusions you can draw. There are way more than a million events, even in trivial probability spaces. This style of trickery with probabilities irks me as a statistician.
- wcoenen 4y ago
  Imagine you are kidnapped and knocked unconscious. Then you wake up in a prison cell by yourself. You are now wearing a prison uniform with a label that says "prisoner N", where N is some number. Would it really be "trickery with probabilities" to say that there is only a one-in-thousand chance that the total number of prisoners is more than 1000*N? And that the real number of total prisoners is probably much closer to N?
  - 317070 4y ago
    Yes to the first question! The distribution representing my beliefs in such a scenario would not have a finite variance. Given the question, are you aware of the Pareto distribution? Nassim Taleb has great work explaining fat-tail distributions. (I do have strong priors on various things, such as the size of the human population and the sizes of large prisons, which I ignore here as they break the metaphore)

317070 4y ago

I have never understood this type of argument. Even in my regular life, I am atypical in more than one one-in-a-million way. I was born in a tiny city, population less than 1000. But following your line of reasoning, that is sufficient argument that the population of the world is less than 1 billion. It is fine to say "we don't know". Events in which you are in a one-in-a-million situation will be rare, but unless you know the number of events in consideration, there are few conclusions you can draw. There are way more than a million events, even in trivial probability spaces. This style of trickery with probabilities irks me as a statistician.

wcoenen 4y ago
Imagine you are kidnapped and knocked unconscious. Then you wake up in a prison cell by yourself. You are now wearing a prison uniform with a label that says "prisoner N", where N is some number. Would it really be "trickery with probabilities" to say that there is only a one-in-thousand chance that the total number of prisoners is more than 1000*N? And that the real number of total prisoners is probably much closer to N?
- 317070 4y ago
  Yes to the first question! The distribution representing my beliefs in such a scenario would not have a finite variance. Given the question, are you aware of the Pareto distribution? Nassim Taleb has great work explaining fat-tail distributions. (I do have strong priors on various things, such as the size of the human population and the sizes of large prisons, which I ignore here as they break the metaphore)