OPINION (WSJ) – Is humanity doomed? We certainly don’t lack apocalyptic scenarios: nuclear war, a robot uprising, out-of-control climate change. Unlikely, far-fetched? Not according to scientists and mathematicians who, in recent decades, have found a surprising new source for anxiety about the long-term survival of the human race: probability theory. The so-called “doomsday argument” holds that there is a 50% chance that the end of human life will come within 760 years. You may well wonder how
such a calculation is possible, much less an area of serious scientific inquiry. The answer involves the unlikely combination of an 18th-century English clergyman and a Silicon Valley algorithm. Thomas Bayes (1702-1761) was an obscure country preacher who dabbled in math. He is remembered for Bayes’ theorem, a mathematical formula that shows how to use new evidence to adjust probabilities. Some believe that Bayes was trying to find a way to demonstrate the possibility of biblical miracles. In any case, his theorem got scant attention for two centuries, until the invention of computers. READ MORE
