The Doomsday Argument is Reasonable and Mostly Points to Longevity

The Doomsday argument was proposed in a 1983 lecture by Brandon Carter and elaborated on in John Leslie's 1996 book The End of the World: The Science and Ethics of Human Extinction. The basic idea is to think of your order among humans being born and apply the Copernican principle that you aren't in a special position. If you imagine yourself as the median human in birth-order, that would imply as many people will be born after you as were before. You can extend it to a cumulative probability fu...