Reasoning about the future

doom and beauty

Dennis Dieks

pp. 427-439

in: Stephan Hartmann, Luc Bovens (eds), Bayesian epistemology, Synthese 156 (3), 2007.

Abstract

According to the Doomsday Argument we have to rethink the probabilities we assign to a soon or not so soon extinction of mankind when we realize that we are living now, rather early in the history of mankind. Sleeping Beauty finds herself in a similar predicament: on learning the date of her first awakening, she is asked to re-evaluate the probabilities of her two possible future scenarios.