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No One Knows the Date or the Hour: An Unorthodox Application of Rev. Bayes's Theorem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Paul Bartha  and
Christopher Hitchcock
Paul Bartha*
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia
Christopher Hitchcock
Affiliation:
Rice University
*
†Bartha: Department of Philosophy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6T 1Z1; Hitchcock: Division of Humanities and Social Sciences 101–40, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125.
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Abstract

Carter and Leslie (1996) have argued, using Bayes's theorem, that our being alive now supports the hypothesis of an early ‘Doomsday’. Unlike some critics (Eckhardt 1997), we accept their argument in part: given that we exist, our existence now indeed favors ‘Doom sooner’ over ‘Doom later’. The very fact of our existence, however, favors ‘Doom later’. In simple cases, a hypothetical approach to the problem of ‘old evidence’ shows that these two effects cancel out: our existence now yields no information about the coming of Doom. More complex cases suggest a move from countably additive to non-standard probability measures.

Type
Probability and Statistical Inference
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 66 , Issue S3: Supplement. Proceedings of the 1998 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part I: Contributed Papers Sep., 1999 , 1999 , pp. S339 - S353
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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References

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