Re: tautology

From: Gilles HENRI <Gilles.Henri.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 09:24:31 +0200

A 21:12 -0700 15/09/99, hal.domain.name.hidden a écrit:
>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

maybe the first prediction should read: there is probably no alien race
which outnumbers the sum of all other races? which is certainly true (and
the second one certainly false) if the universe is indeed infinite.

Gilles
Received on Thu Sep 16 1999 - 00:22:26 PDT