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Doomsday argument - Wikipedia

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The doomsday argument (DA), or Carter catastrophe, is a probabilistic argument that claims to predict the future population of the human species based on an estimation of the number of humans born to date. The doomsday argument was originally proposed by the astrophysicist Brandon Carter in 1983,[1] leading to the initial name of the Carter catastrophe. The argument was subsequently championed by the philosopher John A. Leslie and has since been independently conceived by J. Richard Gott[2] and Holger Bech Nielsen.[3] Similar principles of eschatology were proposed earlier by Heinz von Foerster, among others. A more general form was given earlier in the Lindy effect,[4] which proposes that for certain phenomena, the future life expectancy is proportional to (though not necessarily equal to) the current age and is based on a decreasing mortality rate over time. The premise of the argument is as follows: suppose that the total number of human beings who will ever exist is fixed. If so, t

Doomsday argument - Wikipedia Jump to content From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Doomsday scenario on human births Not to be confused with the Doomsday equation or the Doomsday rule . This article relies excessively on references to primary sources . Please improve this article by adding secondary or tertiary sources . Find sources: "Doomsday argument" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( August 2016 ) ( Learn how and when to remove this message ) World population from 10,000 BC to AD 2000 The doomsday argument ( DA ), or Carter catastrophe , is a probabilistic argument that aims

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