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Old 10-27-2004, 11:47 AM
reubenf reubenf is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Seattle, WA
Posts: 85
Default Re: Doomsday Thereom

Try looking at N being the number of years humans will exist, and x being how many years we've existed so far. Using the same logic, you'll get seemingly contradictory results because the number of humans to have existed grows exponentially.

This whole exercise seems a lot like saying that, if you flip a coin, then look at it, you can confidently state there is a 50% chance it's heads. Because you'll be right 50% of the time. That's not really useful, though, since you could easily be right 100% of the time without using any logic at all.

Or you could say that at any given point in your life, there is a 50% chance that you won't live to twice your age. Because, if you guess that you won't live to twice your age at every point in your life, you'll be right 50% of the time. This is a useless result, though, as people who don't know how to do any aritmetic can get it right far more often than that.
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