Research Paper - The Doomsday Argument
The trope of the world coming to an end and rebirthed has been brought up several times throughout our curriculum. In our Norse Mythology unit, we learned about Ragnarök which was the day the Vikings believed the world would come to an end – the final battle between the Aesir and the Giants. The world would then be rebirthed and life will thrive once again. Similarly, we learned about The Coming of the Apocalypse in our Ancient World unit which is a cataclysmic event that causes the end of the world and leads to a new heaven and a new earth where there is no more suffering, death, or evil.
In modern times, a theory called the Doomsday Argument that was first proposed by the astrophysicist Brandon Carter in 1983 stated that if we had a timeline between the first human ever born and the last human to ever exist and we were to assume that we are at a random position in this timeline, we can say that mankind is at a greater risk of extinction if we were to assume that we are near the end of the timeline. This argument suggests that if the total number of humans who will ever live is not significantly larger than the current population, then humanity is more likely to face a catastrophic event that causes them to go extinct. They estimate the total number of humans who will ever live solely based on current population size and birth rates which is why many people criticize the argument for making questionable assumptions about population growth as it doesn’t take into account technological advancements.
If we were really to think logically here, we would have to take into account the science and ethics of human extinction as the argument illegitimately assumes that the human race will not last forever which can be inaccurate. However, to say that we are early in the whole timeline of humankind can be fallacious as well since there are numerous threats to mankind in this day and age such as asteroid impacts, nuclear or biological warfare, terrorism, poisoning the environment, ozone layer destruction, new diseases, the fear of computers and artificial intelligence taking over, disasters from genetic engineering, the list goes on. Furthermore, an argument I really like to think about is the fact that we haven’t been in contact with any other extraterrestrial life which can suggest that technologically advanced societies quickly destroy themselves.
Regardless of how grim and dark the future might seem, the Doomsday Argument remains a controversial and speculative idea in the fields of cosmology and philosophy as it is based on probabilistic reasoning and does not provide definitive predictions about the future. Overall, the Doomsday Argument is an intriguing thought experiment that is constantly evolving and being brought up but will most likely remain speculative and will never gain widespread acceptance as a model or equation used to predict the end of the world.
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