Matt Bamberger - The Doomsday Argument

The Doomsday Argument

Wed, 11/29/2006 at 21:45

Gloom and doom made quantitative

Very briefly, the doomsday argument is a probabilistic argument that near-term human extinction is much more likely than is normally believed. Although the argument doesn't feel quite right to most people (including me), it's surprisingly hard to come up with a definitive counter-argument.

Nick Bostrom has a particularly good synopsis. Wikipedia has a more detailed but less concise explanation.