Re: tautology

From: <hal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 21:12:44 -0700

Closely tied to the self selection assumption is the Doomsday argument,
which says that we are probably about halfway along in the lifetime of
the human race, hence (if you count by observers or observer-moments)
the human race should go extinct within a few thousand years.

Can we also predict, based on the self selection assumption, that there
are probably no sentient alien races which vastly outnumber humans?
Otherwise it would be overwhelmingly more probable that we would be an
alien than human, right?

Could we also predict that the total number of sentient aliens in the
universe is probably no more than, say, 100 times the population of
the human race? This one seems more questionable because if all aliens
are no more populous than humans, then no matter who you are you will
see a race which is no more numerous than our own.

Hal
Received on Wed Sep 15 1999 - 21:18:29 PDT