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DanielLC comments on People who want to save the world - Less Wrong
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As someone who accepts both the doomsday argument and EDT (as opposed to TDT), I don't think the world can be saved.
I want to improve the world.
I'm not sure of the predictive value of the doomsday argument but my own thought experiments seem to give a fairly high probability that we're all ultimately doomed (and long before thermodynamics wins out).
So I'm with you: if the world can't be "saved" then I want some to achieve some tradeoff between prolonging our existence as much as possible, and improving the condition of the world in the remaining time.
I am sure of the predictive value of the doomsday argument, but I'm not sure of the predictive value of virtually anything else. Exactly how sure can you be that your thought experiments aren't biased? The galaxy can support about 10^40 people. If there's only a one in ten billion chance of being wrong, it's an expected 10^30 people. And that's not even getting into the fact that the laws of thermodynamics might be wrong.
What about the smoking lesion problem?
I suggest arguing about the smoking lesion problem on the article about that problem, or discussing EDT on an article about it.
Okay; if you reply to a post about the smoking lesion problem or if you know of a post defending EDT then I will discuss it with you there.