The Doomsday Argument

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Since the dawn of humanity around 100 billion people have lived. How many will live in the future of our species? We might hope for a trillion times that if we colonize the galaxy. But a simple statistical argument tells us that the doom of our species is much, much closer.
Hosted by Matt O'Dowd
Written by Matt O'Dowd
Graphics by Leonardo Scholzer & Adriano Leal
Directed by: Andrew Kornhaber
Executive Producers: Eric Brown & Andrew Kornhaber
End Credits Music by J.R.S. Schattenberg: / @jrsschattenberg
In some recent episodes we’ve explored the anthropic principle and seen how it can be used to explain the fact that both our planet and our universe seem very finely tuned to allow the development of life. Our planet and/or universe can be rare and unlikely as long as there are enough other planets and/or universes to stack the odds in favour of our existence. We touched on both the potential power and potential misuse of this principle. Today we’re going to push our luck, and see how this controversial idea can be used to predict the physics of our universe, and also to predict the imminent demise of the human race.
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Пікірлер: 2 900

  • @ireallyhatemakingupnamesfo1758
    @ireallyhatemakingupnamesfo17584 жыл бұрын

    We still have 100,000 years of humanity left, but if we all work together I think we can bring it down to 50!!! C'mon!

  • @thricefan89

    @thricefan89

    4 жыл бұрын

    America is currently trying to destroy the world.

  • @thricefan89

    @thricefan89

    4 жыл бұрын

    @Romulas Ex Well, their plutocratic class but their uneducated elected a wannabe dictator who clearly doesnt care about the environment or the 7 billion people who live on the planet

  • @ornessarhithfaeron3576

    @ornessarhithfaeron3576

    4 жыл бұрын

    You mean raise it to 50!!! ? Because 50!!! is much greater than 100000

  • @jari2018

    @jari2018

    4 жыл бұрын

    think of the probem as -you live in a rental skyscaper -Everyone in that builning has a nuke and the norm is You or any disturbance of any kind is a reson let it get off -So the problem descibed is ..Why are you imagining or beliving in the future is now forverever and You wonder How long you the mankind in the house will live/survive .Every tenat ahs children and their children has the nuke -so with 1000 appartments and 1000 years -so how long would it take before one hits the trigger for no reason other than paranoia ..boredome or reson whatever .. not long .after 3 generation they are dead and we are now in the second

  • @LDProductionsClass

    @LDProductionsClass

    4 жыл бұрын

    This kind of analysis, if valid, tells us the result -- so we can't change it ;)

  • @dtrcs9518
    @dtrcs95184 жыл бұрын

    There are 7 billion people on earth alive today, there's also 10 000 000 000 000 000 ants. Since being born a human is so much rarer than being born an ant, we can conclude that we're probably ants hallucinating.

  • @dancrane3807

    @dancrane3807

    4 жыл бұрын

    If you conclude that, I bet you are an ant hallucinating.

  • @mitseraffej5812

    @mitseraffej5812

    4 жыл бұрын

    DTR CS Ants aren’t born, they hatch.

  • @taoist32

    @taoist32

    4 жыл бұрын

    Blissfully Ignorant Right now it’s Queen Elizabeth.

  • @shardsofcontent4829

    @shardsofcontent4829

    4 жыл бұрын

    That mindrip is gonna keep me up all night ...

  • @mitseraffej5812

    @mitseraffej5812

    4 жыл бұрын

    Blissfully Ignorant . Maybe Trumps daughter? That’s after he suspends the constitution and declares himself emperor.

  • @wellsb973
    @wellsb9733 жыл бұрын

    I made it through a pandemic at age 47 just to get a mid-life crisis from this video.

  • @fuzzypanda1684

    @fuzzypanda1684

    Жыл бұрын

    Lol, if it lowers your stress, by "making it through the pandemic", you're in the 99.9% majority, since the actual death rate was around 0.1%.

  • @StanleyKubick1

    @StanleyKubick1

    Жыл бұрын

    Lol and we're still not through the pandemic

  • @sobreaver
    @sobreaver4 жыл бұрын

    'Never tell me the odds' - Han Solo

  • @geradosolusyon511

    @geradosolusyon511

    4 жыл бұрын

    '2,4,6,8,10' - Me

  • @harry_page

    @harry_page

    4 жыл бұрын

    "Sometimes I just don't understand human behaviour."

  • @artmcteagle

    @artmcteagle

    3 жыл бұрын

    "I'm Not Very Optimistic About Our Odds." K2 in Rogue One

  • @pierfrancescopeperoni

    @pierfrancescopeperoni

    3 жыл бұрын

    @@geradosolusyon511 Yeah, until you admit you were writing in base 9.

  • @ChrisBrown-pw2lb

    @ChrisBrown-pw2lb

    3 жыл бұрын

    LMAO!

  • @deepfriedsammich
    @deepfriedsammich4 жыл бұрын

    “Strange events permit themselves the luxury of occurring.” - Charlie Chan

  • @jovetj

    @jovetj

    4 жыл бұрын

    “A fool and his money are soon parted. A fool and his beliefs are united indefinitely.”

  • @davidmeehan4486

    @davidmeehan4486

    4 жыл бұрын

    Is Charlie Chan related to Jackie Chan?

  • @mamamheus7751

    @mamamheus7751

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@davidmeehan4486 on the off-chance that was a genuine question, no.

  • @Alcove_Dream

    @Alcove_Dream

    4 жыл бұрын

    David Meehan they post on 4 chan

  • @paul5311

    @paul5311

    4 жыл бұрын

    "but in the stone age..." - Chris-chan

  • @onebronx
    @onebronx4 жыл бұрын

    When I finished watching the video I realized that the very fact I've successfully finished watching the 18-min video has moved my median position 18 min forward and made our expected doomsday postponed by ~36 minutes. Keep making more videos, please! For our survival.

  • @ryoon816
    @ryoon8164 жыл бұрын

    Lol - “...17 types of drizzle.”

  • @MasterCrvo

    @MasterCrvo

    2 жыл бұрын

    THIS hitchhiker really knows where their towel's at.

  • @douglaswinters9695

    @douglaswinters9695

    2 жыл бұрын

    Golden

  • @ZappaBlues
    @ZappaBlues4 жыл бұрын

    “Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.”

  • @ostiedestrie2155
    @ostiedestrie21554 жыл бұрын

    I'm a bit confused about something: Couldn't *any* human born at any point in history make the doomsday argument? A human born 2 million years ago would come to the conclusion that the end of the world is neigh, and so would a human born 2 million years from now. If we accept the reasoning of the doomsday argument, doesn't this just mean that everyone, for all of history, will come to the conclusion that we're all going to die sooner rather than later?

  • @revenevan11

    @revenevan11

    4 жыл бұрын

    Yes, and every observer can only exist in a timeline in which all previous doomsday arguments were wrong. So don't worry about it and just keep trying our best regardless of what this fishy statistical hypothesis says, because even if the doomsday argument is right, we won't be there to observe it ;)

  • @travisrhodus1362

    @travisrhodus1362

    4 жыл бұрын

    Pretty much. The difference in logic between the boxes & projecting the extent of human civilization reminds me of the Monty Hall problem*. For the boxes it's simple probability that we make 'safe' assumption of. I find in the 'probable doom' prediction that it's going from self-selection to self-fulfilling prophecy; kinda like how in stories they say that should one have the ability to foresee the future one should avoid reading TOO much into one's own future as projecting further out into the possibility space can be easily confounded by one's personal desires: you aren't predicting it you're making it happen.. I might not have conveyed all that well but I tried 😅 I mention Monty Hall because of how folks if they apply the wrong assumptions, will consistently get it wrong(double down) until you elucidate it via goat repeatedly. *On a game show you reach the end of the event: shown 3 doors, 1 has a car, 2 have goats, you pick a door, then the host to build suspense opens 1 of the 2 other doors to reveal a goat, then asks "Will you switch or will you stay your choice?": you are twice as likely to win the car if you switch to the 3rd other door: you flip from a 1/3 to 2/3 chance because you have new information, also the host has to know where the car is else he could reveal the car & you could just pick it already.. then again, if it's a really awesome goat...

  • @Fletchlie

    @Fletchlie

    4 жыл бұрын

    The end of the world, is indeed, neigh 🐴🐎🐴

  • @nydydn

    @nydydn

    4 жыл бұрын

    And weren't they right? Feel free to ask them. I find it interesting that the doomsday argument predicts the end of the world in 50 years, which is also the time a human who would make such a prediction would still be expected to live. I wonder if there's a hidden link, or I am seeing stuff that just ain't there.

  • @eds1942

    @eds1942

    4 жыл бұрын

    The World as they know it dies with them.

  • @deepfriedsammich
    @deepfriedsammich4 жыл бұрын

    Ogg the Cro-Magnon: "Bad news, Thag, by statistical method, I calculate our race probably never going to exceed 500,000 total members. We got maybe 200 years left."

  • @altareggo

    @altareggo

    4 жыл бұрын

    lol funny thing is tht species lasted like, half a million years. We should hope to exist as long!!

  • @NoMoreForeignWars

    @NoMoreForeignWars

    4 жыл бұрын

    If you talk to a lottery winner they could use anthropic reasoning to assume winning the lottery is easy because it happened to them. Talk to the millions of losers and they would disagree. The existence of winners doesn't make the odds invalid tho just like the existence of the first .001% of humans doesn't mean that the anthropic argument is wrong. Just that it's most likely correct for the vast majority of humans that make it.

  • @peaceonearth351

    @peaceonearth351

    4 жыл бұрын

    I read that about 70,000 years ago, humanity almost was wiped out from a super-volcano. Knocked us down to about 10,000 in population.

  • @TheCimbrianBull

    @TheCimbrianBull

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@peaceonearth351 That was just my grandfather farting.

  • @peaceonearth351

    @peaceonearth351

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@TheCimbrianBull I see the resemblance. Lol

  • @RADlX
    @RADlX4 жыл бұрын

    Damn I got criticized by my elementary teachers for starting my essays with “since the dawn of humanity”. Matt pulls it off like nobody’s business 🧐

  • @CorgiButter69
    @CorgiButter693 жыл бұрын

    Understanding 1% of this video. Me: “knowledge is power”

  • @pierfrancescopeperoni

    @pierfrancescopeperoni

    3 жыл бұрын

    I accept these comments for certain videos on this channel, but if you actually whatch this one you'll notice that there is nothing hard here to understand.

  • @CorgiButter69

    @CorgiButter69

    3 жыл бұрын

    @@pierfrancescopeperoni quite the pretentious comment/weird flex but ok

  • @pierfrancescopeperoni

    @pierfrancescopeperoni

    3 жыл бұрын

    @@CorgiButter69 ...

  • @MasterofOrion

    @MasterofOrion

    2 жыл бұрын

    @@CorgiButter69 .....

  • @baiwuli6781

    @baiwuli6781

    2 жыл бұрын

    no, ''power is power''

  • @Zahaqiel
    @Zahaqiel4 жыл бұрын

    Step 1: Define reference class as "homo sapiens sapiens existing concurrently with the internet". Step 2: Observe that the internet has existed approximately 30 years. Step 3: Assume self-sampling principle makes sense and internet access is bell curved over the duration of its existence or skewed towards late-phase access... The internet's going to cease to exist some time in the next 30 years guys.

  • @davidmeehan4486

    @davidmeehan4486

    4 жыл бұрын

    Agreed.

  • @christinearmington

    @christinearmington

    4 жыл бұрын

    Seeems right 🤷‍♀️🧖‍♀️

  • @Dunning.Kruger

    @Dunning.Kruger

    4 жыл бұрын

    That's why I'm storing porns.

  • @ShadeAKAhayate

    @ShadeAKAhayate

    4 жыл бұрын

    And that it, chindren, you don't allow philosophers into scientific areas. Grab your pitchforks and torches!

  • @ekki1993

    @ekki1993

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@ShadeAKAhayate They have already infiltrated cosmology pretty hard though.

  • @JackinTheBox1984
    @JackinTheBox19844 жыл бұрын

    I feel like my brain is 30 orders of magnitude bigger now. Also I'm going to go look up what a order of magnitude is.

  • @John-jc3ty

    @John-jc3ty

    4 жыл бұрын

    you know that earth type attack in pokemon that ditto learned

  • @maythesciencebewithyou

    @maythesciencebewithyou

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@John-jc3ty they removed that attack in the latest editions

  • @John-jc3ty

    @John-jc3ty

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@maythesciencebewithyou then this video makes no sense

  • @kaizorro03

    @kaizorro03

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@John-jc3ty made my day.

  • @JackinTheBox1984

    @JackinTheBox1984

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@John-jc3ty I don't know but maybe I should binge watch Pokemon so that I find out. Honestly I don't know why I never watched it but it could be because it first came out when I was in High school when I was in that "I'm a big boy now" phase so I keep thinking of it as to childish even tho adult me watches MLP.

  • @onixasas
    @onixasas2 жыл бұрын

    Thanks pewds

  • @ozzell
    @ozzell4 жыл бұрын

    Can't we use this argument in a slightly different way for the universe. Isn't it odd that we exist in a universe so young? The universe will according to our current understanding live on for thousands of billions of years, yet it's currently only 13.8 billion years old as we exist.

  • @dannycampbell6223

    @dannycampbell6223

    4 жыл бұрын

    Glass half full, I like it.

  • @codrin8606

    @codrin8606

    4 жыл бұрын

    Yeah but if you think about it actually, we are pretty late to the whole life party considering that life was possible since the universe was about 1 billion or so years old, and in a few billion years the universe will die out due to the expansion of it so we dont have a lot of time to spend here

  • @WetPig

    @WetPig

    3 жыл бұрын

    @@codrin8606 The fact we are so early to the whole party would mean there is a big chance that we are the only sufficiently advanced civilization. Imagine only 1 other civilization that beat us by 1 billion years in our own galaxy. Assuming our current rate of technological advancement in 1 billion years we should be an interstellar civilization maybe even an intergalactic one. If our assumptions about the earlier civilization are true, we should have seen signs or even communicated with them. But we haven't. PS: Just saw that you also used the word "party", I somehow didn't see it the first time I read your comment, but still used it myself :)

  • @JudoP_slinging

    @JudoP_slinging

    3 жыл бұрын

    You can look at it two ways: The universe is very early in it's current state yet has produced intelligent life (presumably through some random natural process), hence intelligent life should be somewhat common in the universe throughout it's entire age. Furthermore, simple life appeared very quickly after appropriate conditions appeared on earth so it would appear that this process is somewhat high probability too and we should expect simple life wherever conditions are right. OR Of presumably all intelligent observers we see an extremely young universe, this would imply the universe will likely not harbour much intelligent life in the future or it's current state may be unstable and collapse to one which does not allow intelligent life. And then you can think about the Fermi paradox which implies that intelligent life is rare in the universe (as we see no galaxy spanning civilisations today despite adequate time for them to develop). Seems like there's lots of competing statistical factors to weigh up.

  • @musaran2

    @musaran2

    3 жыл бұрын

    @@WetPig ​And Earth has only ~600 mio years left of decent habitability, suggesting intelligence is unlikely to happen fast enough. Other sign : There is a handful of tool-using or self-aware species, some lineages dating back to long ago, suggesting that level is somehow common. And yet, only us made it to technology.

  • @ghipsandrew
    @ghipsandrew4 жыл бұрын

    6:44 Doom Soon and Doom Late, but what about Doom Eternal?

  • @justsuperdad

    @justsuperdad

    4 жыл бұрын

    Eternal Soon!

  • @davidreynolds1669

    @davidreynolds1669

    4 жыл бұрын

    2020

  • @TheRogueWolf

    @TheRogueWolf

    4 жыл бұрын

    Is that where a demon has to figure out how long it will be before a large angry man in green armor tears its arm off and beats it to death with it?

  • @rwood1995

    @rwood1995

    4 жыл бұрын

    That would be what religion wants you to believe. Makes dying sound so much better than it actually is !!!!

  • @livingfray2340

    @livingfray2340

    4 жыл бұрын

    Since it got pushed back to march, we are already in teh "Doom Late" scenario

  • @Banzai51
    @Banzai514 жыл бұрын

    I've been called a hoopy frood by Matt O'Dowd. I can die in peace now. But hopefully farther down the road.

  • @samory2761

    @samory2761

    4 жыл бұрын

    Just be content in that according to the anthropic principal you can assume you are about halfway through your existence.

  • @LeoStaley

    @LeoStaley

    4 жыл бұрын

    Do you know where your towel is?

  • @Banzai51

    @Banzai51

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@LeoStaley You know it.

  • @Ni999

    @Ni999

    4 жыл бұрын

    Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters for everyone!

  • @liwoszarchaeologist

    @liwoszarchaeologist

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@samory2761 great now I'm stuck in a perpetual midlife crisis

  • @dp758
    @dp7584 жыл бұрын

    Love these docs every time. I'm very grateful for these educational videos. Thank you for always making my day PBS Space Time! :)

  • @gaohkai9441
    @gaohkai94414 жыл бұрын

    That two-pronged weather quip had me in stitches, great deadpan delivery as usual!

  • @ytkerfuffles6429
    @ytkerfuffles64294 жыл бұрын

    If any species became a galactic civilisation, they would come up with this in the early stages

  • @b.griffin317

    @b.griffin317

    4 жыл бұрын

    "we're half way along in our species' history, and always will be."

  • @BlatentlyFakeName

    @BlatentlyFakeName

    4 жыл бұрын

    We dont know what we dont know :P

  • @knyghtryder3599

    @knyghtryder3599

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@randy2811 why is alien life always assumed ultra advanced?? And what us advanced and why would it 'help' us all dumb ideas, aliens most likely represent the most common forms of life on earth , blue green algae, bacteria, viri fungi etc. Except they wouldnt share any bio-dna link with you.... so no help

  • @thethirdjegs

    @thethirdjegs

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@knyghtryder3599 because only advanced alien life counts. 😂😂😂

  • @knyghtryder3599

    @knyghtryder3599

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@thethirdjegs get ready 2 be sad for ever, the only remote chance of finding something relatable are inter galaxy clusters..... but we wont get there .... maybe one other example in our current cluster but not likely close... good luck

  • @swc1355
    @swc13554 жыл бұрын

    Kratos: "Fate is another lie told by the gods." Mimir: "On that, you and the Allfather may just agree."

  • @jpe1

    @jpe1

    4 жыл бұрын

    swc1355 if I remember high school mythology class correctly, kratos was a minor Greek god (personified strength or valor or something like that) and I think Mimir was Norse (perhaps beheaded by Odin?) so I like the idea of them somehow meeting and chatting about the nature of their respective pantheons. Do you reference Búri (or perhaps Odin) specifically when you name “the Allfather” or are you imagining some kind of Zeus/Odin hybrid?

  • @swc1355

    @swc1355

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@jpe1 It's from the game "God of War". Way too much to explain here, but I think relevant to the video.

  • @polluxtroy69

    @polluxtroy69

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@jpe1 go a play God of War 4. You will bot be disappointed

  • @NATIK001
    @NATIK001 Жыл бұрын

    Problem with the entire doomsday argument is the idea that we just randomly ask the question at some point during humanity's existence, rather than the question itself being tied to specific pre-conditions which cannot be statistically averaged out. In reality we ask the question at the first point the philosophical and scientific basis for forming the question become settled. It stops being analogous to the box situation because the box situation is independent of the person drawing, IE the contents of box isn't affected by the background of the person pulling from it. With the Doomsday argument the number of the ball we draw will be influenced by our drawing itself, because we will always draw roughly the same number because we would always ask the question around the same point in our development. To me this must mean our drawn number can have no relation to the number of possible numbers higher because we must draw roughly the same number regardless of how many numbers are too come. I really don't think the Doomsday argument works, not because the statistical argument is bunk at its core, but because it fails to take into account the reality of situation, which is what causes the question to be asked in a given time and by a given observer. It ends up making a seriously unfounded assumption unintentionally, which is that the first observer to ask the question is halfway through the lifespan of his or her species. This is not intended or supported by anything, but it is the natural outcome of assuming that an observer is statistically average across all parameters, ignoring whether those parameters make sense to average out. Imagine the first observer to form this argument in a universe where humanity lives until the heat death of the universe. That observer would still form this argument now, and not in a trillion trillion trillion etc years. Imagine the first observer to form this argument in a universe where humanity lives until tomorrow. That observer would form that argument now and not thousands of years ago. The end of humanity has no relation to us forming this argument, because the argument is not tied to the end or averages over humanity's lifespan. It is tied to specific developmental steps we must always make around the same time in either scenario.

  • @maxkho00

    @maxkho00

    Жыл бұрын

    The Doomsday argument is bunk but not for the reason that you describe, nor any of the reasons described in the video. To be honest, I don't even understand your argument. From this point on, every future generation of humans will be aware of the Doomsday argument since it's already been formulated and, if nothing else, its knowledge will be passed down with every generation; and, if not, it's a pretty simple argument, so we should definitely expect it to be thought of independently, especially by more advanced civilisations (such as future humans). So sure, people a trillion trillion years from now will be aware of the Doomsday argument. But anyway, the reference class argument is just stupid. It's pretty obvious the reference class is "any observer capable of formulating the Doomsday argument"; the situation is analogous to Weinberg's cosmological constant estimate, or to any argument based on the anthropic principle. The actual problem with the Doomsday argument is Bostrom's version of the self-sampling assumption; specifically, the assumption that the future can be sampled from with the same probability distribution as the past and present. It's actually not that hard to refute this assumption. Consider the following example: There are 2 boxes, each containing consecutively numbered balls starting from number 1, all randomly shuffled. Box #1 contains 10 balls, while box #2 contains 100,000. However, in box #2, 99,999 of the balls are microscopic in size, while the ball numbered 5 is almost the size of the entire box. You are then presented with a box, but you don't know if it's box #1 or #2. You have to open the box and draw the first ball that your hand touches. You draw ball number 5. Which box did you pluck it from? The doomsday argument claims it's overwhelmingly likely you picked it from box #1. However, that's obviously not true, because the probability distribution of picking each of the balls in box #2 is not uniform. Similarly, the present has an obvious impact on the future. For example, if we wanted to, we could all just commit suicide, thus reducing the probability of our birth rank percentile NOT being extremely high (close to 100%) to 0. Alternatively, we could all start reproducing as proactively as we possibly could, thus artificially raising the probability of our birth rank percentile being very low to 1. Clearly, because the future is not independent of the present, we cannot assume that sampling from all past, present, and future states would yield a uniform distribution. We could if we assumed e.g. that the future already exists, but clearly, it doesn't.

  • @mitchellwilley7208

    @mitchellwilley7208

    7 ай бұрын

    ​@@maxkho00u guys talk alot about the what ifs and coupda u should focus on the death spiral the world's in right now. I'd give us 8-10 years max before the next nuke is dropped. It's about obvious as day. No I'm not some conspiracy nut, although I could show nutty proof from Bible that could back my claim I don't even need that. There's enough physical evidence in the world today that you don't need faith in God to see it. You just need to be a morally good person and watch the world news.

  • @LaserGuidedLoogie
    @LaserGuidedLoogie4 жыл бұрын

    This is easier to understand than to explain, but you did a better job than most I have heard it from.

  • @mimzim7141
    @mimzim71414 жыл бұрын

    on average every human should assume he is Chinese.

  • @joegillian314

    @joegillian314

    4 жыл бұрын

    Chinese might have a plurality in terms of population, but the probability of non-Chinese is actually greater.

  • @magnuspeacock5857

    @magnuspeacock5857

    4 жыл бұрын

    This is why I hate the argument from probability. Take a person born as one of the first 1000 human beings. The odds of you having been born this early in the 100,000,000 people future of human kind is 1 in 1,000,000 _(check my calculation, mental maths is not my strong suit)._ It is most likely that the hypothetical human is living in the highest populated point in human history. _Therefore, humanity went extinct a million years ago._ The anthropic principal just *proved* that we dont exist!!! The chance of me being born in Edinburgh during the early 00s is so infinatecimally small that logically I was never born at all. And yet, despite the best efforts of probobility, here I am.

  • @mimzim7141

    @mimzim7141

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@joegillian314 that is the whole point. We should may be not assume we are in an average situation. They are more "exceptional" situations than average ones.

  • @Mythos131

    @Mythos131

    4 жыл бұрын

    Actually on average every human should assume they are not Chinese

  • @jovetj

    @jovetj

    4 жыл бұрын

    We should not assume anything. You know what happens when you _assume?_ You make an _ass_ out of _u_ and _me._

  • @moosemaimer
    @moosemaimer4 жыл бұрын

    a microbe, sometime ago: "It is an incontrovertible fact that all life on the planet that has ever existed consists purely of unicellular chemotrophic prokaryotes like ourselves; therefore it is most likely we are in the midpoint of life as we know it, and should not assume that any great change will come to pass in the distant future."

  • @asagoldsmith3328

    @asagoldsmith3328

    4 жыл бұрын

    Ugh, stop fantasizing and get back to protein synthesis.

  • @TheCimbrianBull

    @TheCimbrianBull

    4 жыл бұрын

    @synchromorph *Big Chungus intensifies*

  • @kyjo72682

    @kyjo72682

    4 жыл бұрын

    And maybe that's exactly what happened in the overwhelming majority of their possible futures of the quantum multiverse. But since we are conscious observers we have to (based on the anthropic principle) be in one of the rare ones which lead to the evolution fo huge eukaryotic multicellular things with brains..

  • @SmithnWesson
    @SmithnWesson4 жыл бұрын

    I love these episodes. I love thinking of myself as either a sample from a small box or a large box.

  • @hereticpariah6_66
    @hereticpariah6_664 жыл бұрын

    In *my* universe, we're living in the "doom _now"_ scenari---

  • @mollyslattery9692

    @mollyslattery9692

    4 жыл бұрын

    Ah Nnooooooooooooo!

  • @Jondiceful

    @Jondiceful

    4 жыл бұрын

    I was going to reply but I realized what a pointless gesture that would be. RIP dude.

  • @1pcfred

    @1pcfred

    4 жыл бұрын

    In my Universe I play Doom in the evening. I wouldn't mind playing a game now though.

  • @bluesap7318

    @bluesap7318

    4 жыл бұрын

    hereticpariah 6/66. [°___°}

  • @DanteKG.

    @DanteKG.

    4 жыл бұрын

    F

  • @drodriguez2257
    @drodriguez22574 жыл бұрын

    Everyone in the comment section: *having intellectual discussions* Me: His shirt changed color at 12:18

  • @Welverin

    @Welverin

    4 жыл бұрын

    the comment responses (almost) always are recorded separately.

  • @justsuperdad

    @justsuperdad

    4 жыл бұрын

    Lol, great eye, what is that changing? Are his shirts digital? Matt are you physics-ing neck-ed?

  • @pranavlimaye

    @pranavlimaye

    4 жыл бұрын

    It's actually because the software they use for chroma-keying (removing the green screen background) can't decide whether that shade of orange is a transculent red on a green background, or, something actually orange.

  • @yvesnyfelerph.d.8297

    @yvesnyfelerph.d.8297

    4 жыл бұрын

    That's meant as a special treat for his Patreon members. I heard rumours that for quasar level contributors he does weekly pole dancing sessions over on twitch

  • @AsheOdinson

    @AsheOdinson

    4 жыл бұрын

    I am so glad that I wasn't imagining this.

  • @icollectstories5702
    @icollectstories57024 жыл бұрын

    Solipsism is simpler: if I die, the universe ends.

  • @SrmthfgRockLee

    @SrmthfgRockLee

    4 жыл бұрын

    hey man im desperate do u know pbs spacetimes' discord? i need it ;o

  • @someone2973

    @someone2973

    4 жыл бұрын

    Solipsism doesn't say that I am all that exists, just that all I can be certain to exist. Even in solipsism it is still possible that there is a world outside my head that is roughly how I experience it to be, even though I may not be able to be certain that the outside world exists.

  • @753238

    @753238

    4 жыл бұрын

    Just EPIC

  • @icollectstories5702

    @icollectstories5702

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@someone2973 Are you very sure your existence is not linked to mine? If you do exist, of course.

  • @reigels

    @reigels

    4 жыл бұрын

    Is it solipsistic in here, or is it just me?

  • @Sorngard13
    @Sorngard134 жыл бұрын

    I think the main problem with the doomsday argument is that it always applies. If you went pack to the 11th century the doomsday argument would say that humans most likely won't survive to the 14th century. You can make a general version: the doom soon box would be a future with a total of say 1000N people, and the doom late box would be N^2 or something like that, where N is the total number of humans born up to that point. Then the doomsday argument always tells you to pick the doom soon box, regardless of N. Assuming that N has throughout human history taken most values between 1 and what it is right now the doomsday argument has failed around sqrt(107 billion) times and never succeeded. So it probably should not be trusted.

  • @KhaledKimboo4
    @KhaledKimboo44 жыл бұрын

    Finding videos didn't already see in this channel feels like finding gold.

  • @mrjaz666
    @mrjaz6664 жыл бұрын

    One of my favourite things about this channel is Matt's look of tolerant disappointment on his main page banner :D

  • @invin7215

    @invin7215

    4 жыл бұрын

    Blue steel, magnum, tolerant disappointment.

  • @gwarscout1825

    @gwarscout1825

    4 жыл бұрын

    Shouldn't he be guzzling Tabasco sauce during this video? :)

  • @christobita8038

    @christobita8038

    2 жыл бұрын

    He knows that we're doing our best.

  • @r-pupz7032

    @r-pupz7032

    2 жыл бұрын

    That description is so spot on I love it :D

  • @brianjlevine
    @brianjlevine4 жыл бұрын

    The second we discover an intelligent alien race, all bets are off.

  • @leonardwitucke1

    @leonardwitucke1

    4 жыл бұрын

    Do you think that will happen in the next 100 years?

  • @proxyshooter

    @proxyshooter

    4 жыл бұрын

    leonard witucke likely, but unsure

  • @voice-less

    @voice-less

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@leonardwitucke1 the chance is almost 0, so don't even consider it

  • @EveloGrave

    @EveloGrave

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@leonardwitucke1 Maybe not 100 years but hopfully within the next 500

  • @Merennulli

    @Merennulli

    4 жыл бұрын

    I'm pretty sure Vegas will disagree. There is no way someone isn't already betting on aliens being discovered.

  • @knyghtryder3599
    @knyghtryder35994 жыл бұрын

    Great amazing explanation well said!

  • @Brandon-dy8us
    @Brandon-dy8us4 жыл бұрын

    "Coming from Australia where it swings between 5000 degree heat and raining... spiders! I do envy the consistency of your 17 different types of drizzle!" Wrecked lmaooo

  • @inquaanate2393
    @inquaanate23934 жыл бұрын

    Do the rocks observe the universe? When one rock hits another, they interact, one slows down, the other speeds up. Are we not just a more complex example of this. I’m a biochemist. All that happens in out bodies is just tiny bits hitting each other, interacting according to the laws of physics. With a predictable outcome, like the rock? Maybe. What really is an observer.

  • @lrwerewolf

    @lrwerewolf

    4 жыл бұрын

    In quantum physics, any interaction of any systems that cause the future evolution of those systems to in some way depend on that interaction constitutes an observation. So yes, rocks are observers, as are electrons and quarks and Geiger counters and stars and galaxies.

  • @CheCheDaWaff

    @CheCheDaWaff

    4 жыл бұрын

    In Quantum Mechanics it's something that tends to align the density matrix into a diagonal form. This happens most readily when large complex systems interact with something. So, from that perspective, a rock is less of an observer than something like a brain, but not "zero of an observer" (though there are "zero-observer" interactions).

  • @inquaanate2393

    @inquaanate2393

    4 жыл бұрын

    lrwerewolf blah Modus Ponens so are any universes not capable of containing observers?

  • @CheCheDaWaff

    @CheCheDaWaff

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@inquaanate2393 Without changing the laws of physics, I don't think so. If you're willing to change the laws of physics, then of course you can - you could just have a universe with nothing in it at all.

  • @helgrind8493

    @helgrind8493

    4 жыл бұрын

    Something that can learn about quantum mechanics at university and think: damn, quantum mechanics sucks

  • @srwapo
    @srwapo4 жыл бұрын

    "To use the anthropic principle properly, we must use it carefully." YOU'RE NO FUN! 😡

  • @okko8su

    @okko8su

    4 жыл бұрын

    That's the point of the whole channel 😊

  • @enterprisesoftwarearchitect

    @enterprisesoftwarearchitect

    4 жыл бұрын

    If we are the budding years of life’s existence, then the chances are 100% we are in the early stages of life. The others don’t exist yet.

  • @rmdodsonbills
    @rmdodsonbills4 жыл бұрын

    "Rains spiders" HAH! Thanks for the laugh.

  • @RichardASalisbury1
    @RichardASalisbury1 Жыл бұрын

    P.S. Meant to add that I love your videos, have learned a lot from them.

  • @justsuperdad
    @justsuperdad4 жыл бұрын

    "... Ten years later when dark energy was discovered...". Isn't discovered too strong of a term? Dark Energy is really a term to encapsulate symptoms we observe related to expansion. That expansion of which is still under great study as to what is a current valid metric. Not to mention that we have also made assumptions that calculations of a previous age are even close to accurate.

  • @Nosirrbro

    @Nosirrbro

    4 жыл бұрын

    I think it’s fair to say that if there is an observed acceleration, even if the particulars of how it works we have entirely wrong, there has to be an energy which we have discovered.

  • @b.griffin317

    @b.griffin317

    4 жыл бұрын

    would you saw newton "discovered" gravity? or at least the "laws" of gravity?

  • @justsuperdad

    @justsuperdad

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@Nosirrbro agreed. But with the variation in results, it seems the perceived expansion could actually turn out to be instead an increase in zero point energy reducing the flow of relativistic particles. Then we realize the symptom was not viewed correctly. Following the definition becomes useless. And yet it had become so ingrained into the field of physics that generations pass and still it is not abandoned. For instance, Einstein's General Relativity shows that gravity is a bending of spacetime, and not to be confused with a force. Yet still today, gravity is listed as one of the four main forces, and described as the least known forces. People still spend their time trying to rectify it as a field in QFT (separate from spacetime), or try their hardest to detect a particle for gravity as though it would be named a graviton. That's a century of not understanding Einstein, and it continues.

  • @justsuperdad

    @justsuperdad

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@b.griffin317 Given the robust, tested GR which replaces Newton's laws whenever more than a rough calculation is needed; the answer is invariably no. He was onto something. His equations are still useful for many simple cases. His part has been great for Physics in our version of intelligent evolution. However, his definitions also lend themselves to be a main culprit that we still gloss over Einstein's explanation that curvature of spacetime eliminates gravity as a force.

  • @justsuperdad

    @justsuperdad

    4 жыл бұрын

    As a follow-up concept. There is an issue with comparing the complex nature of observing and calculating universe expansion versus the relatively simple anecdote of an apple falling on Newton's head. If Newton can be a little off when writing down laws regarding that simple anecdote, is it meaningful to even create a word "Dark Energy" or "Dark Matter". The best definition to give those is, things which we have not directly discovered but some observations lend credence to it's existence. It is defined as having discovered the things which have not been discovered yet. It'll be less meaningful if it turns out there are two or more distinct components to dark matter, or entirely meaningless if dark matter is ruled out with a breakthrough in knowledge about the effects of curvature of spacetime, gravitational effects.

  • @Gaben_Enjoyer
    @Gaben_Enjoyer4 жыл бұрын

    My vote is for Doom now. /E1M1 starts playing.

  • @MatthewCaunsfield
    @MatthewCaunsfield4 жыл бұрын

    That was really touching, thanks

  • @AnkitIyer9
    @AnkitIyer94 жыл бұрын

    10:36 I do sometimes wonder if i'm just a tamagotchi contemplating my own existence

  • @flxschrbr
    @flxschrbr4 жыл бұрын

    "I, for one welcome the doomsday if it means graduating out of our reference class into some sort of cybernetic, gene-spliced ultra-human." thank you :)

  • @nnnn20430

    @nnnn20430

    3 жыл бұрын

    @skOsH how would be destroy "our" consciousness creating other "neohumans", and why assume we can do such a thing in the first place?

  • @Verrisin
    @Verrisin4 жыл бұрын

    You cannot realistically use statistics methods for things, that only happen once.

  • @dtrcs9518

    @dtrcs9518

    4 жыл бұрын

    Not in a frequentist framework

  • @nolanwestrich2602

    @nolanwestrich2602

    4 жыл бұрын

    True, but the things being discussed in these episodes don't have any other methods.

  • @stevenkyle2295

    @stevenkyle2295

    4 жыл бұрын

    Agreed, how would you argue, in the events of multiple repition? "Why do I agree to your comment"? Because human is unique, not statistics of groups in my opinion. Tho I am not sure of the single event you're describing.

  • @pulsar22

    @pulsar22

    3 жыл бұрын

    Actually you can assume that it has not happened once but many times for each species that existed on earth. You'll then realize than the "doom late or doom early" doomsday argument is invalid by noting that every species on earth, including bacteria in petri dishes, grows to fill a niche. That niche is defined by what that can species can exploit. Since by that principle, humans are planning to exploit the planets on our solar system, and possibly the planets on our galaxy, then we might actually be only at the very start of our march to our doom millions of years hence.

  • @JudoP_slinging

    @JudoP_slinging

    3 жыл бұрын

    Yes, you can. If there is a bag with 1 red ball and 9 blue balls in and I pick ONE ball out ONCE what is the probability it is red?

  • @12jswilson
    @12jswilson3 жыл бұрын

    I like the idea at the end responding to questions of a "Horn of Gabriel" universe

  • @maxrockatansky3896
    @maxrockatansky38964 жыл бұрын

    I love the challenge questions!

  • @Tutul_
    @Tutul_4 жыл бұрын

    mid-video though (I edit if you talk about it) : The argument of the two box is wrong. With that scenario, we can only found for sure if we are in the second box. Only one pickup of a shared element can't give you any useful informations. Yes they are more chance to pick 5 in the first one than in the second but we still need to pick a random element. If we continue to pickup a ball after replacing the previous one in the box, we still can't confirm the first box. Like the boltzmann brain, we can pickup 89676878/76 balls that are common of the two box and endup with just an statistical intuition on the result but without any full confidence. As for the doomsday argument, we are in a similar wrong assumption, we are picking up ourself. As we don't take someone from the future, we can't get more confidence than a roman citizen at Pompeii that may think the end is near and die in the eruption two years later.

  • @kyjo72682

    @kyjo72682

    4 жыл бұрын

    Yes, you can't be 100% sure. But if you pick any number between 1 and 10 you can be 99.01% sure you picked from the first box.

  • @Tutul_

    @Tutul_

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@kyjo72682 not with only one pick.

  • @kyjo72682

    @kyjo72682

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@Tutul_ Why? Assuming the pick is random, I don't see how number of attempts is relevant.

  • @Tutul_

    @Tutul_

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@kyjo72682 because you can only assume the answer based on statistic if you take more than once. The first pick don't provide any useful informations, you may be in a typical solution or a really particular one. But you can't know that with only one measure.

  • @kyjo72682

    @kyjo72682

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@Tutul_ But you are more likely to be a typical member (e.g. in the middle 90 %) and less likely to be a paticular one (e.g. among the first 5 % or the last 5 %). Therefore if you pick number 100 billion it is more likely that the box has 200 billion total rather than 20 trillion or 105 billion.

  • @MrSidMan
    @MrSidMan4 жыл бұрын

    Uh oh. My angry girlfriend just got home. I feel like a Doomsday Argument is about to happen.

  • @teaser6089

    @teaser6089

    3 жыл бұрын

    Did you survive?

  • @davidtatro7457
    @davidtatro74572 жыл бұрын

    An interesting and well balanced summation of the various arguments. Whatever one's take on doomsday calculations, it is certain that human cognitive conceits and arbitrary value-assignment factor into every single attempt. We humans certainly do love to think we are important.

  • @curtsheldon6649
    @curtsheldon66494 жыл бұрын

    I'm someone who now has a headache...lol. Very informative. Keep it up.

  • @TazPessle
    @TazPessle4 жыл бұрын

    With the doom early vs doom late box, every observer through history could assume to be near the end of their species.

  • @NovaSaber
    @NovaSaber4 жыл бұрын

    Anyone who applied the "doomsday argument" a thousand years ago has already been proven wrong.

  • @LazyBoy306

    @LazyBoy306

    4 жыл бұрын

    TheNovaSaber thousand years ago we thought the earth was flat lmao

  • @randomguy263

    @randomguy263

    4 жыл бұрын

    Exactly, and a lot of people who would've applied the doomsday argument before would've been proven wrong (if you would've applied it 50 years ago you would've been wrong.

  • @randomguy263

    @randomguy263

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@LazyBoy306 No, we didn't.

  • @susmitamohapatra9293

    @susmitamohapatra9293

    4 жыл бұрын

    TheNovaSaber Yes, just as we can use this argument to show that humans can't live up to the year 3000, the people in the year 1000 could use this argument to show that we can't live up to the year 2000. In fact I find the whole reasoning leading to the argument improper. In the original scenario, he gave us 2 boxes, one with numbers 1 to 10, another with numbers 1 to 1000. When one calculates the probability of finding a 5 in each box, one can conclude that the 1st box has 1/10 probability for it, while the 2nd one has 1/1000 probability. But when one asks the question, how much probability is there of finding the number 5 in box 1 versus box 2, then one can say there is 50% chance of being in box 1 and 50% chance of being in box 2. My reasoning is that there is one 5 in box 1 and one 5 in box 2 and we have to pick one so 50-50. Though I know I didn't apply probability theory correctly, it could be that probability theory does not model reality exactly.

  • @zoltankurti

    @zoltankurti

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@LazyBoy306 ancient Greeks knew the Earth is round, they even estimated it's circumference. I belive it was Eratosthenes.

  • @bulentkulkuloglu
    @bulentkulkuloglu4 жыл бұрын

    Prof O’Dowd Ever since I first heard about the anthropic principle, I have thought about it. My best understanding is that we must not use this principle to infer as if the universe had an obligation for our existence. Universe neither has an obligation to create us, nor it is arranged to enable our petty existence. However improbable the odds, and evin if all details seem to be fine tuned, the universe is as randomly probable as it can be in every category of variables, and totally independent of any and all existing or potential observer. But we exist, as a byproduct of this random and independent variables outcomes and we are an outcome not only with our mere existence, but every single property we possess in that existence (like our temperment, life span, height, blood pressure, competitive vs cooperative tactics, why we are on a small blue planet,...)

  • @CorrieSloot
    @CorrieSloot4 жыл бұрын

    I have been thinking about this for years.

  • @TreyRuiz
    @TreyRuiz4 жыл бұрын

    All of these interpretations sound like the "why me?" question people ask when they are the 1 in a 10 million person hit by a tornado, or in the opposite case the lucky winner to the lottery. If something is going to/must happen, no matter how unlikely, that person is going to say "why me?". IE: If physics says something special must happen, then the special individual shouldn't be all that surprised...

  • @Aizistral

    @Aizistral

    4 жыл бұрын

    Why me? Well, maybe because *someone* has to

  • @danielmihalik2785

    @danielmihalik2785

    4 жыл бұрын

    But in a lottery, you can say: Well I've won, but there are millions of people who didn't win. In these observations, it's like we are the only contesters and we have won. The first case is perfectly normal, the second case is a bit weird. From this, we are trying to conclude that there must be thousands of others who didn't win, which sounds pretty logical to me.

  • @moosemaimer

    @moosemaimer

    4 жыл бұрын

    As far as we know, _ONE_ person has been hit by a meteor. In the whole history of humanity.

  • @Vastin

    @Vastin

    4 жыл бұрын

    ​@@danielmihalik2785 No. In these observations we are the only *remaining* contestants, because we won. As for the future, we can probabilistically estimate that almost everyone loses, but as long as there is at least one winner, observation of the contest is certain to continue.

  • @ekki1993

    @ekki1993

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@danielmihalik2785 Or, alternatively, we can conclude that we didn't "win" any lottery and there are several other lifeforms also not "winning" their lotteries and that's why we haven't contacted aliens. Why assume we did win and several others lost?

  • @AlwinBarbacena
    @AlwinBarbacena2 жыл бұрын

    KZread recommended this video after I watched PewDiePie talking about Doomsday Argument

  • @joes7407
    @joes74074 жыл бұрын

    Thank you PBS Space for the 4k uploads! 🍻

  • @laur-unstagenameactuallyca1587
    @laur-unstagenameactuallyca15874 жыл бұрын

    Nice. The Refined Anthropic Principle is my personal worldview

  • @hakan6705
    @hakan67054 жыл бұрын

    “..raining spiders...” 😂😂

  • @RobinDSaunders

    @RobinDSaunders

    4 жыл бұрын

    This is no joke! www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/05/150518-spiders-australia-silk-webs-animals-environment/

  • @psykkomancz

    @psykkomancz

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@RobinDSaunders wow!

  • @Waltham1892
    @Waltham18924 жыл бұрын

    Some say the world will end with ice, Others say with fire. From what I've tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire...

  • @b.griffin317

    @b.griffin317

    4 жыл бұрын

    world seems pretty chilly to me.

  • @Waltham1892

    @Waltham1892

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@b.griffin317 But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.

  • @jovetj

    @jovetj

    4 жыл бұрын

    “The world is as cold as you make it.”

  • @Waltham1892

    @Waltham1892

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@jovetj Revenge is a dish best served cold.

  • @jovetj

    @jovetj

    4 жыл бұрын

    *@stoeger 2* ...A _song_ of Ice and Fire...?

  • @isamedonnie
    @isamedonnie4 жыл бұрын

    One of the few pbs space time video I didn’t have to rewatch to understand lol

  • @michaelrobinson806
    @michaelrobinson806 Жыл бұрын

    awesome as usual

  • @andersjjensen
    @andersjjensen4 жыл бұрын

    There is a huge glaring problem here: the two boxes were already filled. The Doom Soon and Doom Late boxes, at this point in time, have the same amount of people in them. Until quantum uncertainty determines if a brilliant physicist figures how to thwart the Einsteinian Tyranny of Relativity, or not, we must assume that we are in both... Unless we want a causality entanglement on our hands.

  • @babytime1

    @babytime1

    2 жыл бұрын

    Mad cuz oceans don’t act like droplets of water. Keep hating Einstein cuz he figured it all out, god never plays dice with oceans, we NEED to study the droplets. To do that we need 2billion dollar particle accelerators

  • @andersjjensen

    @andersjjensen

    2 жыл бұрын

    @@babytime1 You just necroed a two year old comment to let me know you didn't catch the joke....

  • @bucketfullofeternity75
    @bucketfullofeternity754 жыл бұрын

    Easiest answer: We dont need trillion humans if we just stop dying.

  • @AAFroes

    @AAFroes

    4 жыл бұрын

    I agree 100%

  • @AAFroes

    @AAFroes

    4 жыл бұрын

    Less humans more automation, in whatever form that takes.

  • @joshmnky

    @joshmnky

    4 жыл бұрын

    Or we all merge into a hyper mind. That's only one observer.

  • @badactor3440

    @badactor3440

    4 жыл бұрын

    That may not be entirely out of the realm of possibility.

  • @codrin8606

    @codrin8606

    4 жыл бұрын

    Like i keep telling my team in every video game out there

  • @frankx8739
    @frankx87393 жыл бұрын

    Reminds me of the 'Ancestor simulation' hypothesis. Possibly the mistake lies in a misunderstanding of Being & Time: That we are not spirits incarnated from some timeless realm, randomly distributed throughout the lifespan of a universe.

  • @fatmn
    @fatmn4 жыл бұрын

    This reminds me of the harmonic series - if you imagine what term of X you are at in the sequence the same way, the partial sum up to that point is most likely to be ridiculously close to 2.

  • @FirstLast-zv5od
    @FirstLast-zv5od4 жыл бұрын

    I have that same shirt. You sir...have excellent taste.

  • @KohuGaly
    @KohuGaly4 жыл бұрын

    The argument presented in this video cannot give you any prediction, because it fails to quantify prior probabilities. To see what I mean, let's say there's 10^10 "late doom" scenarios for every "near doom" scenario. After applying the doomsday argument, you have 50/50 odds of being in one of the the rare "near doom" vs the much more common "late doom" scenario. "Near doom" is also quite relative. Notice the anthropic principle does not assume that the reference class is homogenous when it comes to livespans. It may very well be that you are among the last humans ever born. Yet you might still personally witness death of last stars and nostalgically remember that event as "the good old days", while you farm black holes for hawking radiation bajillion years later - trends in life expectancy point in that direction.

  • @KubeSquared

    @KubeSquared

    4 жыл бұрын

    I'd refine that to say "among the last humans to ever live" since if we get infinite lifespan thanks to medtech, humans would still continue to be born for maybe billions of years.

  • @KohuGaly

    @KohuGaly

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@KubeSquared I specifically said "born" because the doomsday argument, as I understand it is concerned with order of birth. My point was that, even though you expect the same amount of people being born prior and after your birth, that does not actually put an upper limit on how long civilisation is expected to last.

  • @niklas5771

    @niklas5771

    2 жыл бұрын

    I love the second idea very interesting! Like you said it it wouldn't refute the doomsday argument though since from what I got form the video it doesn't use years but population size as a metric. Regarding your first point: I believe that is taken into account in the doomsday argument. You could argue that some doomsday scenarios impose a greater threat but you could also make the argument that we have to overcome all of those near doom scenarios just to get to a late doom scenario.

  • @TheFinalChapters

    @TheFinalChapters

    2 жыл бұрын

    @@niklas5771 Except you're assuming that those "near doom" scenarios are at all likely. In the box example, the 50/50 odds of picking each box skews the odds of getting each ball in the "small" box all the way up to 5%. But if you were to just take a random ball without the context of the box, suddenly they're all equally likely. Heck, you could make the "large" box happen 99.9% of the time, and suddenly 1-10 would be more likely to have come from the large box! You must apply this same thinking here: out of all the civilizations that reach our current state, how many become galactic civilizations? We can't possibly know that, as we are the only civilization we've ever seen. Maybe none do, or maybe almost all do. Either way, our current place means that we have a shot at the title. Whether we succeed is to be determined.

  • @apopescu002
    @apopescu0024 жыл бұрын

    In regards to the selection of the ‘proper’ reference class. You made a very good point in pointing out that the class of “human” seems to be an arbitrary choice (as opposed to mammals or the class of all conscious beings). However, a proper application of the anthropic principle would lead us to pick out some necessary prerequisites of our reference class. For one, we need ourselves to be in a reference class which is capable of employing the doomsday argument to begin with! It would seem then that the exemplars in our reference class must necessarily have certain properties (e.g. capable of verbal reasoning) that are much more exclusive among the animal kingdom then we initially thought. A much more relevant question would be, “what is the likelihood that I as a conscious observer who has reasoned his/her way into the doomsday argument, would be born at this point in time given (hypothetical future extrapolation scenario)”. The whole point is that we should be concerned about the continued existence of the class which matters to us the most. And it should be pretty obvious (to me at least) that this class should have traits that include advanced reasoning capability of some sort, which at a minimum is capable of the advanced verbal argumentation that one would typically need in understanding this argument to begin with. After all, it is no good to speculate that members of a class will continue to long outlive us, if our future descendants are the kind that are incapable of any advanced reasoning. That is no consolation! This is problematic because now the exemplars in our reference class will correspond basically 1 to 1 to the human species and its close relatives (Possibly Neanderthal and Denisovan), and so we get the argument repeated in its original form.

  • @Iriscal
    @Iriscal4 жыл бұрын

    Kurzgesagt: nobody can give people an existential crisis like me. PBS Space Time: hold my beer.

  • @txHodge
    @txHodge4 жыл бұрын

    "Everybody dies*" * Disclaimer: statement only proven to be 94% accurate. Actual conversation I had with my coworkers a few weeks ago over slack...

  • @agiar2000

    @agiar2000

    4 жыл бұрын

    Indeed! So far, all evidence indicates that I, myself, am immortal. After all, I have not died even _once!_

  • @robertelessar

    @robertelessar

    3 жыл бұрын

    Though it seems accurate to say that by the age of 130, all humans are dead. So far.

  • @DrD0000M
    @DrD0000M4 жыл бұрын

    Should rename it "The Dumbsday Argument."

  • @jayski9410
    @jayski94104 жыл бұрын

    I find the overwhelming amount of certainty possible in the two box thought experiment intriguing. For numbers from 11 to 1000 you would have absolute certainty. It's only for numbers 10 and below that uncertainty enters that picture and then only drops to 50%, forcing us now to rely on probability.

  • @klausantitheistbolvig8372
    @klausantitheistbolvig83724 жыл бұрын

    Wow. I wish you a merry Christmas!

  • @Tfin
    @Tfin4 жыл бұрын

    The doomsday argument says that the 10th human was one of only 20 who would ever be born. The problem with the argument is that it is a rolling estimate which _always_ says we're probably about half-way along the line to our species' extinction.

  • @kyjo72682

    @kyjo72682

    4 жыл бұрын

    Ok, so we know there were 100 billion people. Assume we are in the exact middle and there will ever be only 200 billion people in total. So the 10th guy is obviously wrong thinking he's in the middle. But considering there is 200 billion people he's only in the extreme minority of people who would get such bad result. Majority of people would get an estimate which is much closer to the actual truth..

  • @Tfin

    @Tfin

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@kyjo72682 When there are 100 trillion people, the 100 billion will be a minority.

  • @kyjo72682

    @kyjo72682

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@Tfin Yes, if there were 100 trillion, our estimate of 200 billion would be wrong. But we'd still be a tiny minority of people with such bad result.

  • @Richardincancale
    @Richardincancale4 жыл бұрын

    9:28 “I for one welcome our new cybernetic gene-spliced overlords!”

  • @LeutnantJoker

    @LeutnantJoker

    4 жыл бұрын

    Personally I feel that cybernetic future stuff is making the wrong assumption that humans have stopped evolving, which just isn't the case. Selection of partners is still very much going on and there's plenty of people who never find a mater to have kids with. As long as that is the case + diseases sorting people out, humanity is very much evolving like any other species and there's no need for cybernetics to predict that humans might be very different in the future, depending also on how much our environment will change.

  • @crismonBlue

    @crismonBlue

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@LeutnantJoker all the gensplicing+kybernetic ultra human thing, is less about "humas are a done evolving" and more about "k nature you are slow af ... i handle that now". Evolution is a slow random process and humanity isnt to far off to speed the process up tremendously while at the same aim for more specific results. Doesnt mean its a good think, doesnt man its a bad thing, its just a different thing.

  • @TheCimbrianBull

    @TheCimbrianBull

    4 жыл бұрын

    He is an adherent of the Genestealer Cult in Warhammer 40K.

  • @ekki1993

    @ekki1993

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@LeutnantJoker Yeah, no. Even though evolution is still going on, cybernetics will eventually be an extremely useful lifestyle improvement. It's a safe bet to say humans will have more cybernetic parts in the future.

  • @eduardatonga7056
    @eduardatonga70564 жыл бұрын

    "Consistency of your 17 types of drizzle" hahaha

  • @deepashtray5605
    @deepashtray56054 жыл бұрын

    In the numbered balls problem there is a 1 in 10 change of picking #5 from the box of 10, but there is also a 1 in 10 chance of picking a number in the 1-10 set in the box of 100.

  • @TheExoplanetsChannel
    @TheExoplanetsChannel4 жыл бұрын

    *Merry Christmas EVERYBODY!!*

  • @gr8withan8playz

    @gr8withan8playz

    4 жыл бұрын

    Yeah, nothing like impending doom to get me in the Christmas spirit!

  • @dabeste6163

    @dabeste6163

    4 жыл бұрын

    Woah, a real time traveller!

  • @Birbucifer

    @Birbucifer

    4 жыл бұрын

    J Thorsson Shut up and get cheery you grinch

  • @SamSpade2010
    @SamSpade20104 жыл бұрын

    Therefore: if anywhere there exist observers who never die, we are them.

  • @androkguz

    @androkguz

    4 жыл бұрын

    Yes 😁😁!! Jackpod

  • @BigSausageTits

    @BigSausageTits

    4 жыл бұрын

    pretty much...

  • @SamSpade2010

    @SamSpade2010

    4 жыл бұрын

    @Brian Williams You were always you and always will be. After you wake up, you're the same person who went to sleep.

  • @PaulHoward108

    @PaulHoward108

    4 жыл бұрын

    Every body, of any species, is produced from the soul's prior choices. We're all eternal, and not these bodies at all.

  • @liwoszarchaeologist

    @liwoszarchaeologist

    4 жыл бұрын

    @Brian Williams there is one soul. separation is an illusion kzread.info/dash/bejne/mmqaxa2YlrW_kaw.html

  • @CutieHoney
    @CutieHoney4 жыл бұрын

    I think the problem with picking a human out of box doesn't work unless you roll all of the past and future into a single point in time. Otherwise you can't compare something that changes over time to a static box of balls. You'd have to drop a ball (or balls) into each box over time and grab a ball out of a box at a random interval before all the balls have been placed in the boxes. Without the time component accounted for, I don't think the comparison between a box of balls and the number of all humans of that will ever exist can be made.

  • @NilsJungenas
    @NilsJungenas4 жыл бұрын

    Reminds me of military inteligence using serial numbers of a few captured enemy tanks to calculate the total number of tanks the enemy have produced. That turned out to be fairly accurate. But then again, they usually had more than one sample number to determine the size of the sampled pool.

  • @pippin1111

    @pippin1111

    Жыл бұрын

    And then their enemies responded by implementing non-sequential serial numbers, lmao

  • @michaelpudina4158
    @michaelpudina41584 жыл бұрын

    Why i love the anthropic principle. It's one of the few things left i find almost magical. It predicted the cosmological constant, the doomsday argument, and should be taken seriously when talking about boltzmann brains,simulation theory, ect. I also use this reasoning to find that we are most likely to find ourselves in the most likely universe we should find ourselves in; a cyclic universe, as there are infinitely more chances to find ourselves in a cyclic one as opposed to a one off universe. Coupled with statistics-any chance over infinite time is guaranteed to happen again. Apriori, you know your life is a possibility because you lived it. Therefore, you'll most likely read this again.

  • @MonkeyspankO
    @MonkeyspankO4 жыл бұрын

    We should seed comets with genetic material and/or bacteria from earth and send them on their merry way. We would not see the fruits of those endeavors, but spreading life in a life-less cosmos would be a worthy goal.

  • @SirSmurfalot

    @SirSmurfalot

    4 жыл бұрын

    You mean _contaminating_ the pristine cosmos with life.

  • @MonkeyspankO

    @MonkeyspankO

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@SirSmurfalot I mean, it is the one thing we're most qualified at as a species

  • @Sammysan123
    @Sammysan1233 жыл бұрын

    Oh SNAP! Nailed Shaun at the end :P

  • @ReivecS
    @ReivecS4 жыл бұрын

    Holy hell that clap back at the end about English weather nearly made me pass out laughing.

  • @uncleouch9795
    @uncleouch97954 жыл бұрын

    Awe, F it anyways, who lives forever? Translated into Zen, "Life is an Illusion".

  • @davidwuhrer6704

    @davidwuhrer6704

    4 жыл бұрын

    That's not Zen, that's schizophrenia.

  • @davidwuhrer6704

    @davidwuhrer6704

    4 жыл бұрын

    @skOsH What does a feeling of dissociation from yourself have to do with philosophy, specifically epistemiology? Are you saying that Zen Buddhism is all about being ignorant about what is going on behind your back?

  • @betepolitique4810
    @betepolitique48104 жыл бұрын

    Sounds like the possibility of us not existing at all would be infinite.

  • @surfside75

    @surfside75

    4 жыл бұрын

    Therefore God. 🤷🍻💙✝️

  • @nashleydias1597

    @nashleydias1597

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@surfside75 ehh no

  • @jigsaw2253

    @jigsaw2253

    4 жыл бұрын

    Surfside not your Jesus

  • @nashleydias1597

    @nashleydias1597

    4 жыл бұрын

    @@jigsaw2253 that's already out listed as impossible

  • @mitseraffej5812

    @mitseraffej5812

    4 жыл бұрын

    There is one undeniable truth, “ nothing lasts fo ever” . The religious amongst us tell themselves otherwise in an attempt to allay their fears.

  • @Aurinkohirvi
    @Aurinkohirvi4 жыл бұрын

    Even if I can't get the rest of the episodes, totally getting the end jokes.

  • @Sarsanoa
    @Sarsanoa2 жыл бұрын

    I think the correct reference class is "beings that can come up with the doomsday argument" which would have to also include any potential aliens across all of spacetime.

  • @thatisjustgreat
    @thatisjustgreat4 жыл бұрын

    I was 30 seconds in when I realized the video is probably almost over

  • @SpeedOfDarknesss
    @SpeedOfDarknesss2 жыл бұрын

    The self sampling assumption is a way to make a good guess when you lack additional information (which is essentially what the "all else being equal" clause means). Similarly, the doomsday argument is a good guess for a species' lifespan if you lack additional information. The reason the doomsday argument seems silly is because as individuals (and as a species) we have tons of additional information and we can probably use it to make a much better guess.

  • @pippin1111

    @pippin1111

    Жыл бұрын

    No, the Doomsday argument is not a good method. Under Doomsday argument logic, the most likely time for humans to go extinct is right this second, before any additional humans are born, because that's the smallest possible metaphorical ball box.

  • @SpeedOfDarknesss

    @SpeedOfDarknesss

    Жыл бұрын

    ​@@pippin1111 I think you misunderstood my comment. I elaborate my initial comment into 2 points below: 1. The logic underpinning the doomsday argument is not flawed. For example, if you were presented with a hypothetical scenario with a different species in a different universe with different laws of physics where the only info you had was the total number of beings who lived so far in that species. Then the doomsday argument with the largest metaphorical box allowed by your info would be your best guess. It would be a bad guess, probably, the best you can make with so little info. 2. Meanwhile in our current scenario, humanity in our current universe, the doomsday argument is not even close to being the 'best guess' because we have a relatively huge amount of info about ourselves, our universe, physics, etc. We can use this info to make a significantly better guess. The reason I am making these two points in this order is to illustrate *why* the doomsday argument is not an appropriate guess for humanity. The logic is fine, but we fail the "all else being equal" premise. If you pass the "all else being equal" then the doomsday argument is a fine guess.

  • @pippin1111

    @pippin1111

    Жыл бұрын

    @@SpeedOfDarknesss I can't agree. The only correct answer to the question of "How can you most accurately calculate when a clade is likely to go extinct based solely on its current population" is "You can't, that's not how it works".

  • @SpeedOfDarknesss

    @SpeedOfDarknesss

    Жыл бұрын

    @@pippin1111 The whole premise is that want to make the best guess possible with the info you have. You can certainly argue that the guess is so bad that it's not worth making, but at that point you're basically just refusing the entertain the thought experiment lol

  • @8biscuits
    @8biscuits4 жыл бұрын

    I would absolutely love if Matt would make an episode of this blessed production that would attempt to tackle the question: "what is a reasonable probability that us humans establish a permanent (multiple generation) presence on a celestial body other than Earth by the range of years 2050-2070." That would be a hell of a proposition to attempt to either support or refute, because providing an hypothesis would require addressing anthropic aspects to a degree equal to, if not greater than, any cosmological aspects that could possibly support or refute the... possibility of such an endeavor.

  • @fredbloke3218
    @fredbloke32182 жыл бұрын

    The argument calculation usually takes into account every human that has ever existed and ignores the far greater threats modern humans face, if say I was an ancient Egyptian living a stable sustainable lifestyle I would be fairly confident people would be living the same way for thousands of years in the future, but the rapidly increasing threats modern people live with make the argument far more scary, in the "taking one numbered ball out of a box" analogous situation equivalent to lots more low numbered balls in the box.

  • @John-jc3ty
    @John-jc3ty4 жыл бұрын

    here we trying to predict things assuming we are in the most common part that allows us... imagine if the actual truth was that we are extremely special

  • @knyghtryder3599

    @knyghtryder3599

    4 жыл бұрын

    Yeah but even that assumption is half baked , human like life on earth is extremely rare.... life we find in space will most likely be blue green algae, i could fathom trillions of possibly exo worlds where blue green algae could survive but corn trees dogs monkeys could not.... yeah were litteraly surrounded with super intelligent life if you believe all life on earth is and was intelligent.... also destroying the anthropic principle

  • @chaz000006
    @chaz0000064 жыл бұрын

    My character's reference class is ranger-magic-user.

  • @joshuarichardson6529

    @joshuarichardson6529

    4 жыл бұрын

    Isn't that multi-class limited to half-elves?

  • @yuvalne
    @yuvalne4 жыл бұрын

    "Coming from Australia, where it swings between 5000 degrees heat and raining spiders" wow 😂😂

  • @westtech001
    @westtech0014 жыл бұрын

    I don't know if it goes here but I want to get it down while I think about it. The problem with this argument is that although it's true that by randomly selecting from either box from outside, I am more likely to pick ball #5 from the Box with only ten balls, that's not actually the premise implicit in this argument.. You're not randomly selecting a ball from any box. You're electing from an ordered list ball #1, then #2, Then #3, et al.... If I have a mechanism that randomly delivers to me the #5 ball from one of a number of all possible boxes, that doesn't give me *any* information about which box it came from or even how many boxes there are, it only tells me that there are boxes with at least five balls. It's similar to the Monty Hall problem - once you realize that once you have more information it's not random. it fits.