Jeroen said: > That cannot be true(*). Your statement assumes that: > > a) very few (if any) people existed before the people currently alive, > and > > b) very few (if any) people will exist after the people currently > alive have died.
I was just stating the conclusion of the so-called "Doomsday argument". This roughly says that if the population of humanity is increasing then people in later generations will vastly outnumber people in earlier generations (or centuries, or millennia, or whatever) and so a randomly selected person will be overwhelming likely to be from one of those later epochs. If Nick is a randomly chosen person then that means that this current epoch is likely to be the one at which the human population reaches its zenith, for otherwise he would be someone from a future epoch with a higher population. If most humans who will ever exist are not currently alive then he'd be much more likely to find himself in the future. Here's a much simpler situation that exposes the core of the argument. Put a rock down on the ground and label it with "zero". Then put down a pile of two rocks and label them "one". Then a pile of four labelled "two" and so on until you have eleven piles of rocks (the last of which contains 1024 rocks labelled with "ten"). Now throw all these piles into a big heap and mix them up thoroughly. Pick a rock at random. You're most likely to get one labelled "ten", somewhat less likely to get one labelled "nine" and so on. (The probability of picking one labelled "ten" is 1024/2047, of getting one labelled "nine" is 512/2047, and so on.) Rich GCU Not Entirely Convincing
