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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 6254278" data-attributes="member: 8461">I'm presuming that you're referring to the link to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernican_principle" target="_blank">Copernican principle</a> here, right? The wiki page for the Doomsday argument does go into detail about that, leaving aside its link to the page for it, so I'm not sure what the problem is. The other assumptions regarding the nature of the argument - such as a standardized average lifespan and the total capacity for how many people the Earth can support at one time - are plainly stated.That said, you're not specifying what assumptions on possible distributions you think are required, and why they're required. What's presented seems feasible to me, e.g. the Copernican principle says you can be 95% certain that you're part of the last 95% of all humans to live.Again, what specific solid work do you think isn't here that should be? Can you cite an example?I'm not sure that is a reasonable application of the technique; we know enough about the universe to know that there are some major factors that we can't reasonably predict which will play a major role in how long it lasts (e.g. if the rate of expansion changes again).That's not the case for a probabilistic sampling, which (as I understand it) is premised on being able to keep most of the assumptions within a reasonably narrow band, so as to be able to use that to calculate likely values for the whole of the thing being determined.</blockquote>

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