Physicist J. Richard Gott uses the Copernican principle that “we are not special” to make predictions about the future lifetime of the human race, based on how long the human race has been in existence so far. We show that the predictions which can be derived from Gott’s argument are less strong than one might be inclined to believe, that Gott’s argument illegitimately assumes that the human race will not last forever, that certain versions of Gott’s argument are incompatible with Bayesian conditionalization, and that Gott’s argument is self-refuting.
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机译:物理学家理查德·戈特(J. Richard Gott)使用哥白尼原则:“我们并不特殊”,根据迄今为止人类已经存在了多长时间来预测人类的未来寿命。我们表明,可以从戈特的论点得出的预测不像人们可能会相信的那样强大,戈特的论点非法地假设人类不会永远持续下去,戈特的论点的某些版本与贝叶斯条件化不相容,并且戈特的论点是反驳的。
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