Highly capitalized and reputation-conscious mass media will give you warnings in advance. Clicking on links — yes and that includes innocuous-looking links — is the most dangerous thing you can do. Just don’t click on links or MP3 files for a while.
While we are on the topic of links, here is a great post on why doomsday analysis is wrong. (There are no HP spoilers behind the link. Seriously. Really. I mean it. It’s statistics, Bayesian approaches vs. frequentism, and when the world will end. It’s Andrew Gelman, who can’t even send a text message. I can’t either.) So please do save for your retirement.
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It was the butler!
From what I understand, there’s a frequentist version of Doomsday reasoning associated with Richard Gott and a Bayesian version associated with John Leslie and others, and Andrew Gelman’s critique applies to the former only.
The Doomsday argument doesn’t seem to me to have much to do with saving for your retirement: as far as I know a lot more people have lived in the past (all generations added together) than are alive now. The argument favors a spacetime with, say, 110 billion human lives over a spacetime with 100 billion human lives with a likelihood ratio of only 11/10.
…though that likelihood ratio is only relevant if your prior for doomsday-before-your-retirement is not too high compared to your prior for doomsday-later-in-the-next-few-centuries.
Harry comes out of the closet – he was Hermione all the time !
Let me guess again… Harry “orders for the table” as “Don’t stop believin’” plays in the background.
Phil, that’s been done.
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