Re: Doomsday Argument (was: a baysian solution)

From: Wei Dai <weidai.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 10:46:52 -0700

On Fri, Apr 24, 1998 at 01:53:02AM +0000, Nick Bostrom wrote:
> Yes: that it is not rational to consider one's name a random sample
> from the set of all possible names.Once this is realized, the
> absurd conclusion won't follow.

But the problem is deeper than that. The premise of the argument was not
that one's name should be considered a random sample from the set of all
possible names, but that the total knowledge a person has about the
universe can be summed up as "The real universe contains a person with
mind state M" where M is his current mind state. If this leads to absurd
conclusions, what is the alternative?
Received on Fri Apr 24 1998 - 10:47:58 PDT