Year: 2020
Type: preprint
Abstract: The Doomsday Argument (DA) has sparked a variety of opinions. Here I address a key question posed by F. Simpson (2016) that confronts the views of DA proponents and those who, like me, oppose the DA. I agree that typical locations within a complete spatial distribution are calculable using ordinary frequentist probability. But I argue that the temporal probability distribution is unknown: we have records of our past yet are ignorant of our future. It is this asymmetry that upsets the idea of Copernicanism in time. Although frequentist methods do not apply to this asymmetric situation, Bayesian methods do apply. They show that the various Quick Doom and Distant Doom scenarios are equally likely. I conclude that the DA has no predictive power whatsoever.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Author: Lampton, Mike
Institutions: Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley
Language: English
Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3007848293