Doomsday and objective chance

Teruji Thomas (Global Priorities Institute, Oxford University)

GPI Working Paper No. 8-2021

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Lewis’s Principal Principle says that one should usually align one’s credences with the known chances. In this paper I develop a version of the Principal Principle that deals well with some exceptional cases related to the distinction between metaphysical and epistemic modal­ity. I explain how this principle gives a unified account of the Sleeping Beauty problem and chance-­based principles of anthropic reasoning. In doing so, I defuse the Doomsday Argument that the end of the world is likely to be nigh.

Other working papers

Existential risk and growth – Leopold Aschenbrenner (Columbia University)

Human activity can create or mitigate risks of catastrophes, such as nuclear war, climate change, pandemics, or artificial intelligence run amok. These could even imperil the survival of human civilization. What is the relationship between economic growth and such existential risks? In a model of directed technical change, with moderate parameters, existential risk follows a Kuznets-style inverted U-shape. …

‘The only ethical argument for positive 𝛿’? – Andreas Mogensen (Global Priorities Institute, Oxford University)

I consider whether a positive rate of pure intergenerational time preference is justifiable in terms of agent-relative moral reasons relating to partiality between generations, an idea I call ​discounting for kinship​. I respond to Parfit’s objections to discounting for kinship, but then highlight a number of apparent limitations of this…