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bjones
Skeptic Friend
Australia
82 Posts |
 Posted - 09/26/2001 : 16:35:08 [Permalink]
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quote:
After all, we have intelligence to help us survive, while they did not, and this could make all the difference.
Dinasaurs were not intelligent enough to invent nuclear weapons nor could they learn to fly airliners in simularors.
This could be a plus in their favor as we also have the intelligence to annihilate ourselves very quickly. It took 7 years to build those towers at the WTC and just consider how little time it took to destroy them. 
Bob
Remember: when you die your philosophy dies with you
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@tomic
Administrator
USA
4607 Posts |
Posted - 09/26/2001 : 16:45:28 [Permalink]
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It would take a trmendous number of airliners to kill everyone. I am guessing that before that happened someone would stop making airliners. Nuclear weapons are another matter but this still doesn't explain how this theory knows how many people will exist in the future and this theory is nothing without that one little piece of information.
@tomic
Gravity, not just a good idea...it's the law! |
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bjones
Skeptic Friend
Australia
82 Posts |
Posted - 09/26/2001 : 22:54:46 [Permalink]
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quote:
It would take a trmendous number of airliners to kill everyone. I am guessing that before that happened someone would stop making airliners.
Destableizing the world economy is a major concern and this is what those terrorists are targeting
Bob
Remember: When you die your philosophy dies with you
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@tomic
Administrator
USA
4607 Posts |
Posted - 09/26/2001 : 23:28:02 [Permalink]
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You've wandered off again 
And that has what exactly to do with extinction? Will some future scientist dig up our fossils and theorize that humankind died out during a massive econmic recession??
@tomic
Gravity, not just a good idea...it's the law! |
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bjones
Skeptic Friend
Australia
82 Posts |
Posted - 09/27/2001 : 05:02:09 [Permalink]
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quote:
You've wandered off again
And that has what exactly to do with extinction? Will some future scientist dig up our fossils and theorize that humankind died out during a massive econmic recession??
@tomic
Gravity, not just a good idea...it's the law!
There may not be any scientists around to dig them up by then, unless some other species of animal has evolved to take our place. Super intelligent dolphins maybe (just joking) that is anybody's guess
Bob
Remember: when you die your philosophy dies with you
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@tomic
Administrator
USA
4607 Posts |
Posted - 09/27/2001 : 08:55:09 [Permalink]
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So, uhhhhhh, what's the biggest physical threat to humans because of a recession? What can I do to keep from dying out?
@tomic
Gravity, not just a good idea...it's the law! |
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James
SFN Regular
USA
754 Posts |
Posted - 09/27/2001 : 09:44:53 [Permalink]
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Buy everything in the world you can afford!!!!
[j/k]
The way I see it, christians are godless too...they just don't know it yet. |
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Grove
New Member
USA
9 Posts |
Posted - 09/27/2001 : 12:58:51 [Permalink]
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I've been reading through this post, and it seems to be going all over the place...bjones seems to connect terrorist activity to extiction...I have no idea why...And when he is asked a simple question about his post, he wonders into another direction...These 2 pages have about a hundred ideas smashed into one and isn't making any sense...
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@tomic
Administrator
USA
4607 Posts |
Posted - 09/27/2001 : 13:02:22 [Permalink]
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These 2 pages have about a hundred ideas smashed into one and isn't making any sense...
Hey, you have discovered a consistency!
@tomic
Gravity, not just a good idea...it's the law! |
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bjones
Skeptic Friend
Australia
82 Posts |
Posted - 09/27/2001 : 17:03:07 [Permalink]
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quote:
quote:
These 2 pages have about a hundred ideas smashed into one and isn't making any sense...
Hey, you have discovered a consistency!
@tomic
Gravity, not just a good idea...it's the law!
Now I will put this "Doomsday Argument" (DA) more in a nutshell
Imagine 2 identical. Urns, urn #1 has 10 balls all numbered from 1 to 10. Urn #2 has a million balls in it all numbered 1, 2, 3, ... Now if you put your hand in one of them and pull out the number 462,356 then you will know that was urn #2 because that number was clearly much greater than 10. But what if you pulled out a ball with 7 on it that could of also been pulled out of urn #2 but in all probability it was urn #1
If a scientist formulated a theory that the number of human beings that ever lived and will live was limited around 200billion
And another scientist formulated his theory that the number would eventually grow 200trillion trillion as we colonize other planets in the universe. Then if the second scientist is right than we a exceedingly lucky to be born when then human race is only just beginning, but I feel it is more probable that we born somewhere in the middle of the human species era and not a very privileged pioneer as the second theory suggests. So we are either exceedingly lucky like pulling out that ball with that lucky number 7 from urn #2 or we just exist as some unremarkable very roughly guessed figure of "98,408,245,398th" person to be born on this planet and the whole story of the human race is approximately half over
The DA is a bit of a misnomer because the Human species may not necessary come to a cataclysmic end but instead we are reaching the crest of a bell curve and in maybe 2millions years from now, there may still be a species of homo around but it will be in very much reduced numbers may be close to extinction like blue whales .
Bob
Remember: when you die your philosophy dies with you
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@tomic
Administrator
USA
4607 Posts |
Posted - 09/27/2001 : 17:14:03 [Permalink]
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So you're saying this is just a wild guess?
@tomic
Gravity, not just a good idea...it's the law! |
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bjones
Skeptic Friend
Australia
82 Posts |
Posted - 09/27/2001 : 18:49:23 [Permalink]
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quote:
So you're saying this is just a wild guess?
@tomic
Gravity, not just a good idea...it's the law!
The DA to be valid it need not necessary be anything all that catastrophic like nuclear annihilation but something a lot more benign like the declining birth rate and replacing human labor with robots etc.
It is another wild guess that the Earth will be populated by just a few million hedonistic humans living in a technological Utopia with robots doing all the hard work The may well will be studying their history books and remarking just how bellicose and chaotic the world way back about 2000 AD when the population ballooned out to around 7 billion and many poverty stricken countries bristling and angry about comforts of the Western world and take unprecedented action to illegally migrate to a more promising world. This is not a prediction of tomorrow but is the world as it stands right this minute.
The future population may well not have these serious global problems but because of its much smaller population you would have to be amongst few to be born in it.
Bob 
Remember: When you die your philosophy dies with you.
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@tomic
Administrator
USA
4607 Posts |
Posted - 09/27/2001 : 18:59:27 [Permalink]
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Robots are doing all the hard work? Anyway, post after post you have failed to answer that one simple question that is so necessary to this theory. I'm done with it.
@tomic
Gravity, not just a good idea...it's the law! |
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Zandermann
Skeptic Friend
USA
431 Posts |
Posted - 09/27/2001 : 19:06:15 [Permalink]
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Yes, @tomic, it is a wild guess...a few odd assumptions created to generate a particular situations and then (as bestonnet said) a misuse of probability theory (Bayesian probability)...at least that's my reading of the paper to which bjones linked at the beginning of this thread.
"If in the last few years you haven't discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead." |
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Boron10
Religion Moderator
USA
1266 Posts |
Posted - 09/27/2001 : 22:29:40 [Permalink]
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This seems like an interesting idea, but I agree that the probabilistic models are somewhat flawed. The part that gets me the most is this:quote:
...the whole story of the human race is approximately half over
Correct me if I am misinterpreting your argument, but it seems that at any time in humanity's existence one could postulate (under this hypothesis) that they are living at the midpoint of humanity's lifespan. How can we possibly determine which person is right? quote:
...we are reaching the crest of a bell curve...
I am very unfamiliar with population data, is a bell curve an appropriate approximation? If so, why?
-me. |
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