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Originally Posted by Ken G
The only time you can know the population growth behavior but still apply the Carter conjecture is if you are applying it to your own species, such that you are a randomly chosen life no matter what information you have about what the distribution is doing.
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Yep, that's what I was saying. But here's an interesting paradox that seems to arise from that.
1) Suppose a visiting alien had observed humanity at the time of Aristotle. Seeing in us the potential for exponential growth, the alien realises that he cannot use Carter's reasoning to predict our extinction, because his visit is random in time, rather than in lives.
2) The alien explains Carter's reasoning to Aristotle. By the same token, Aristotle is not entitled to use it to predict human extinction, because the alien has delivered knowledge at a random time, rather than to a random life.
3) But suppose Aristotle had come up with Carter's reasoning for himself, without alien intervention? He would then assume himself to be a random sample from human lives, and could reason according to Carter.
It's the difference between 2) and 3) I find paradoxical, and it seems like there is some germ in there related to
eburacum's earlier "privileged viewpoint" discussion.
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Originally Posted by Ken G
So the Carter conjecture might not hold simply for extinction, in the case of intelligent life it may only hold for the time it will take to alter the genome such that you are I are no longer a randomly chosen life over all humanity?
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Yes, there's a lot of discussion about when you start counting, when you stop counting, and what you count.
Does the "Carter Catastrophe" merely mark a transition to some trans-human condition, as you suggest?
Do we count other species of early human, or do we start from what seems to be some sort of extinction bottleneck in early homo sap existence? I can't now remember exactly how Baxter came up with the very tight 150-200 years cut-off quoted at the start of this thread, but I seem to recall he used some argument to eliminate many humans from the count: perhaps using only post-industrial humans, or those who have existed since Carter's argument was first proposed.
Grant Hutchison