The Doomsday Argument and the Number of Possible Observers
Open accessAbstract
If the human race comes to an end relatively shortly, then we have been born at a fairly typical time in the history of humanity; if trillions of people eventually exist, then we have been born in the first surprisingly tiny fraction of all people. According to the ‘doomsday argument’ of Carter, Leslie, Gott and Nielsen, this means that the chance of a disaster which would obliterate humanity is much larger than usually thought. But treating possible observers in the same way as those who actually exist avoids this conclusion: our existence is more likely in a race which is long‐lived, and this cancels out the doomsday argument, so that the chance of a disaster is only what one would ordinarily estimate.
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Usually models in the doomsday argument literature either assume an ensemble exists or deal with potentially existing ensembles rather than actually existing ones.
“However, usually these models either in effect assume an ensemble exists, or else are content to deal with potentially existing ensembles rather than actually existing ones (see, for example, Olum 2002).”
From Multiverses and physical cosmology (2004) · cites this paper as Olum 2002
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The anthropic principle and its implications for biological evolution
Carter, B. (1983) · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences · doi:10.1098/rsta.1983.0096 · Cited by 375 · cited 1× · see citing works
“ar X iv :g rqc /0 00 90 81 v2 1 3 O ct 2 00 0 If the human race comes to an end relatively shortly, then we have been born at a fairly typical time in history of humanity.”
BackgroundLeslie, J. (1990) · Interchange · doi:10.1007/bf01809610 · Cited by 20 · see citing works
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Research works printed but not linked: 8
- John Leslie. The end of the world. Routledge, London, New York, 1996.
- Nick Bostrom. Observational Selection Effects and Probability. PhD thesis, London School of Economics, 2000.
- Dennis Dieks. Doomsday -or: The dangers of statistics. Philosophical Quarterly, 42:78-84, 1992.
- Tomas Kopf, Pavel Krtous, and Don N. Page. Too soon for doom gloom. gr-qc/9407002. · arXiv
- P. Bartha and C. Hitchcock. No one knows the date or the hour: An unorthodox application of Rev. Bayes's theorem. Philosophy of Science (Proceedings), 66:S229-S353, 1999.
- Carleton M. Caves. Predicting future duration from present age: a critical assessment. Contemporary Physics, 41:143-153, 2000. astro-ph/0001414. · arXiv
- H. Jeffreys. Theory of Probability. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1939.
- Alexander Vilenkin. The quantum cosmology debate. In David O. Caldwell, editor, International Workshop on Particle and the Early Universe (COSMO 98). Amer. Inst. Phys., 1998.
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Multiverses and physical cosmology
Ellis, G. F. R., Kirchner, U., & Stoeger, W. R. (2004) · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2004.07261.x · Cited by 82 · see citing works
“However, usually these models either in effect assume an ensemble exists, or else are content to deal with potentially existing ensembles rather than actually existing ones (see, for example, Olum 2002).”
BackgroundMultiple Universes and Self-Locating Evidence
Isaacs, Y., Hawthorne, J., & Sanford Russell, J. (2022) · The Philosophical Review · doi:10.1215/00318108-9743809 · Cited by 42 · see citing works
- Authors
- Olum, K. D.
- Affiliations
- Tufts University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Olum, Ken D.
- ORCID
- Olum, Ken D.
- Venue
- The Philosophical Quarterly
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2002-04
- Volume
- 52
- Issue
- 207
- Pages
- 164-184
- ISSN
- 0031-8094 (ISSN-L)
- 1467-9213
- OpenAlex
- W2071512932
- Cited by
- 50
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 3 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 2 · 2013: 3 · 2012: 3
- FWCI
- 29.66
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- arxiv.org
- Locations
- The Philosophical Quarterly (publishedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
- CERN Document Server (European Organization for Nuclear Research) (submittedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation
- John Templeton Foundation
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Space Science and Extraterrestrial Life
- Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Statistics and Probability › Probability and Statistical Research
- Keywords
- doomsday argument, anthropic reasoning, human extinction, observer selection
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