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Current article fails to mention the simplest rebuttal constructed thus far: Elon Musk's admitted aim of creating a multi-planetary human species in the foreseeable future. By disseminating Homo Sapiens throughout the Solar System first and then among the stars and galaxies, it becomes ever less likely that any natural or intentional force could exterminate ALL the people. (Unless whoever said Fiat Lux! eventually says Lights out! - but that possibility lies firmly outside the domain of science.) 78.131.76.69 (talk) 22:10, 15 December 2022 (UTC)Reply

This is already addressed in the article. If something happens that significantly increases the ability of humans to survive hardship (meteor, or whatever), then humans today may expect to be in the first 5%, which is the first rebuttal listed. For example, if one is certain that 99% of humans who will ever live will be cyborgs, but that only a negligible fraction of humans who have been born to date are cyborgs, one could be equally certain that at least one hundred times as many people remain to be born as have been. Replace cyborg with extra-planetary inhabitant. Closhund (talk) 18:42, 22 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

What is the point of an argument with a ridiculous premise; 'the total number of humans that will exist is fixed'? 49.186.53.128 (talk) 02:01, 10 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Can you explain why you think this is ridicuolous? The idea is that between the Big Bang and the heat death of the universe, there will be some finite number n of humans. The point of the argument is that we should believe n is low rather than high, that is, we should believe that the total number of humans that will ever live is low. TheWikipediaPersonGuy2016 (talk) 13:54, 10 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

This terminology seems misleading or odd at best. Copernicus's reasons for rejecting a geocentric model of the universe seem completely irrelevant here. Shouldn't it be a principle of indifference? The idea of such a principle is that your credence or subjective probability between two qualitatively identical hypotheses should be equal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_indifference TheWikipediaPersonGuy2016 (talk) 13:56, 10 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

From the first paragraph of the current revision:

> The doomsday argument was originally proposed by the astrophysicist Brandon Carter in 1983

I've seen this attribution elsewhere, but Carter's article (linked below) does not present anything resembling the doomsday argument. Moreover, his reasoning is far less contentious. Attributing the argument to Carter seems misleading. Or at the very least, the reference to the article is misleading.

The anthropic principle and its implications for biological evolution Ontograph (talk) 09:17, 4 February 2025 (UTC)Reply