The doomsday argument

Abstract

Rarely does philosophy make concrete predictions. The Doomsday argument is an important exception. From seemingly trivial premises it seeks to show that the risk that human-kind will go extinct soon has been systematically underestimated. Nearly everybody’s first reaction is that there must be something wrong with such an argument. Yet despite being subjected to intense scrutiny by a fair number of philosophers, no simple or trivial flaw in the argument has been identified.