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Re:The New Population Bomb by xqcgrek2 on Thursday September 23, 2021 @05:18PM (#28635575)
Is humanity disappearing in the next few hundred years really so surprising? Bayesian arguments by physicists already predict it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument

In a nutshell, order all humans ever born or to be born. You and me are equally likely to be anywhere in this list, but it's unlikely we're at the beginning or end. Based on estimates on the number of humans born so far, this constrains the lifetime of the human species to a few hundred years.

Re:The New Population Bomb by ClumsyPilot on Thursday September 23, 2021 @05:39PM (#28635850)
If you do this calculation today, then you expected humanity to exist untill X

But if a hypothetical medieval person did the same calculation based on data avaliable to him, then his answer is Y

For a hypothetical caveman it's Z, where Z is rather small.

Returning to today, X grows every day.

These results are non-sensical, seems like the base assumption is invalid: "it says that supposing that all humans are born in a random order, chances are that any one human is born roughly in the middle"

Re:The New Population Bomb by xqcgrek2 on Thursday September 23, 2021 @05:45PM (#28635943)
Actually a medieval person or neolithic person would have derived large future ages, because in those epochs population growth was slow and arguably not even exponential.

The fact we know there is a fast rise and possible peak in world population around 2050 means most humans born or ever to be born will be born in the years ~1700-2200. This is pure math, and an argument against it is an argument against the Copernican principle.

Re:The New Population Bomb by ClumsyPilot on Thursday September 23, 2021 @06:07PM (#28636212)
Yup, i got it wrong. However it seems like a statistical argument from a sample of 1, very similar to this:

https://xkcd.com/605/

Could method adequately predict extincrion of DoDo or brontasaurus?

Re:The New Population Bomb by ceejayoz on Thursday September 23, 2021 @05:20PM (#28635597)
Why do human ancestors stretching back ~1B years not count?
Re:The New Population Bomb by xqcgrek2 on Thursday September 23, 2021 @05:23PM (#28635623)
They could, but most humans ever born have been born in the last 300 years.
Re:The New Population Bomb by ceejayoz on Friday September 24, 2021 @10:28AM (#28642902)
You're missing the point, though. Count pre-human ancestors and that's no longer true.

It ceases to become a "doomsday" argument and more the (fairly obvious) idea that our species is likely to continue evolving to some extent, possibly to the point where we're something posthuman.

Re:The New Population Bomb by syntheticnature on Thursday September 23, 2021 @05:35PM (#28635806)
Most humans ever born so far.