746
space offer clues to the differential meanings of groups and individuals, families
and friends, loved ones, and distant relations. All of these connections form the
backdrop of a fantastic re-transcendentalism that is inchoate in the palm of one’s
hand, so to speak, with correlations invoking activism or, as we watch the Amazon
burn, unspeakable sadness, even resignation.
When we place all the global conversations regarding hope and optimism at
scale, Doomsday becomes immediately mathematical. Its calculations date back
thousands of years, often coinciding with astronomic events that lit up the night sky,
or engendered darkness at noon (to borrow from Arthur Koestler’s 1940 novel,
Sonnenfinsternis). Various forms of the populist “Nostradamus Effect” inculcate
myriad Armageddons, hieratic hermeneutics, Egyptian gods, and Babylonian goddesses. Myths of Ur, of Gilgamesh, Enkidu and Yggdrasil, of Divine Comedies and
Arcadias geographically expressed. In 1993 Princeton astrogeophysicist, J. Richard
Gott III, stoked modest controversy with a piece he published in Nature suggesting
that there was good mathematical reason to believe the human species would be
extinct within 760 years, precisely. William Poundstone explores such mechanical
and/or visionary apparitions in his book, The Doomsday Calculation (2019) with
telling reference to the philosopher/mathematician Thomas Bayes (1701–1761)
who had formulated rational foundations for random event probabilities and varietal
consequentialities
4
.
Bayes’ most famous work was a 23-page set of calculations within the realm of
“experimental philosophy” arguably given to the “proof” of the existence of God,
entitled “An Essay towards Solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances” and
published with the posthumous assistance of his executor, and close friend, Richard
Price two years after Bayes’ untimely death. In seeking to provide a circumstance
for his speculations, Bayes writes, “Let us imagine to ourselves the case of a person just brought forth into this world and left to collect from his observations the
order and course of events what powers and causes take place in it.” And later
concludes, “And tho’ in such cases the Data are not sufficient to discover the exact
probability of an event, yet it is very agreeable to be able to find the limits between
which it is reasonable to think it must lie, and also to be able to determine the
precise degree of assent which is due to any conclusions or assertions relating to
them”
5
(Fig. 82.1).
4 See William Poundstone, The Doomsday Calculation – How an Equation That Predicts the Future
Is Transforming Everything We Know about Life and the Universe, Little, Brown Spark, New York,
2019. See also, Poundstone’s article in Vox, “A math equation that predicts the end of humanity How much longer till we all die off? 760 years, give or take,” July 5, 2019, https://www.vox.com/
the-highlight/2019/6/28/18760585/doomsday-argument-calculation-prediction-j-richard-gott,
Accessed January 25, 2019
5 Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 53, 1763, 370–418, https://web.
archive.org/web/20110410085940/http://www.stat.ucla.edu/history/essay.pdf, pp. 19, 23)
82 Shifting Balance
space offer clues to the differential meanings of groups and individuals, families
and friends, loved ones, and distant relations. All of these connections form the
backdrop of a fantastic re-transcendentalism that is inchoate in the palm of one’s
hand, so to speak, with correlations invoking activism or, as we watch the Amazon
burn, unspeakable sadness, even resignation.
When we place all the global conversations regarding hope and optimism at
scale, Doomsday becomes immediately mathematical. Its calculations date back
thousands of years, often coinciding with astronomic events that lit up the night sky,
or engendered darkness at noon (to borrow from Arthur Koestler’s 1940 novel,
Sonnenfinsternis). Various forms of the populist “Nostradamus Effect” inculcate
myriad Armageddons, hieratic hermeneutics, Egyptian gods, and Babylonian goddesses. Myths of Ur, of Gilgamesh, Enkidu and Yggdrasil, of Divine Comedies and
Arcadias geographically expressed. In 1993 Princeton astrogeophysicist, J. Richard
Gott III, stoked modest controversy with a piece he published in Nature suggesting
that there was good mathematical reason to believe the human species would be
extinct within 760 years, precisely. William Poundstone explores such mechanical
and/or visionary apparitions in his book, The Doomsday Calculation (2019) with
telling reference to the philosopher/mathematician Thomas Bayes (1701–1761)
who had formulated rational foundations for random event probabilities and varietal
consequentialities
4
.
Bayes’ most famous work was a 23-page set of calculations within the realm of
“experimental philosophy” arguably given to the “proof” of the existence of God,
entitled “An Essay towards Solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances” and
published with the posthumous assistance of his executor, and close friend, Richard
Price two years after Bayes’ untimely death. In seeking to provide a circumstance
for his speculations, Bayes writes, “Let us imagine to ourselves the case of a person just brought forth into this world and left to collect from his observations the
order and course of events what powers and causes take place in it.” And later
concludes, “And tho’ in such cases the Data are not sufficient to discover the exact
probability of an event, yet it is very agreeable to be able to find the limits between
which it is reasonable to think it must lie, and also to be able to determine the
precise degree of assent which is due to any conclusions or assertions relating to
them”
5
(Fig. 82.1).
4 See William Poundstone, The Doomsday Calculation – How an Equation That Predicts the Future
Is Transforming Everything We Know about Life and the Universe, Little, Brown Spark, New York,
2019. See also, Poundstone’s article in Vox, “A math equation that predicts the end of humanity How much longer till we all die off? 760 years, give or take,” July 5, 2019, https://www.vox.com/
the-highlight/2019/6/28/18760585/doomsday-argument-calculation-prediction-j-richard-gott,
Accessed January 25, 2019
5 Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 53, 1763, 370–418, https://web.
archive.org/web/20110410085940/http://www.stat.ucla.edu/history/essay.pdf, pp. 19, 23)
82 Shifting Balance