Related papers: Apocalypse Now? Reviving the Doomsday Argument
Following the critical review of Seaman et al. (2012), we reflect on what is presumably the most essential aspect of Bayesian statistics, namely the selection of a prior density. In some cases, Bayesian inference remains fairly stable under…
In this PhD thesis the ancient question of determinism ('Does every event have a cause ?') will be re-examined. In the philosophy of science and physics communities the orthodox position states that the physical world is indeterministic:…
Given i.i.d. data from an unknown distribution, we consider the problem of predicting future items. An adaptive way to estimate the probability density is to recursively subdivide the domain to an appropriate data-dependent granularity. A…
The search for extraterrestrial (alien) life is one of the greatest scientific quests yet raises fundamental questions about just what we should be looking for and how. We approach alien hunting from the perspective of an experimenter…
This paper is an attempt to formalize analytically the question raised in "World Population Explained: Do Dead People Outnumber Living, Or Vice Versa?" Huffington Post, \cite{HJ}. We start developing simple deterministic Malthusian growth…
Retrocausal models of QM add further weight to the conflict between causality and the possible existence of free will. We analyze a simple closed causal loop ensuing from the interaction between two systems with opposing thermodynamic time…
We propose a framework for general Bayesian inference. We argue that a valid update of a prior belief distribution to a posterior can be made for parameters which are connected to observations through a loss function rather than the…
One of the mainstays of the controversial "rare Earth" hypothesis is the "Goldilocks problem" regarding various parameters describing a habitable planet, partially involving the role of mass extinctions and other catastrophic processes in…
I have suggested that one possible solution of the Boltzmann brain problem is that the universe is decaying at an astronomical rate, making it likely to decay within 20 billion years. A problem with this suggestion is that it seems to…
In this study, we examine a Bayesian approach to analyze extreme daily rainfall amounts and forecast return-levels. Estimating the probability of occurrence and quantiles of future extreme events is important in many applications, including…
In the present article we have investigated a very natural question regarding the dynamics of the universe, namely, the possibility of its decelerating phase immediately after the present accelerating phase. To begin with, we have focused…
The definition of thermodynamic entropy is dependent on one's assignment of physical microstates to observed macrostates. As a result, low entropy in the distant past could be equivalently explained by selection of a particular observer. In…
We re-examine claims that anthropic arguments provide an explanation for the observed smallness of the cosmological constant, and argue that correlations between the cosmological constant value and the existence of life can be demonstrated…
There has been a recent spate of essays defending presentism, the view in the metaphysics of time according to which all and only present events or entities exist. What is particularly striking about this resurgence is that it takes place…
I describe reasons to think we are living in an eternally inflating multiverse where the observable "constants" of nature vary from place to place. The major obstacle to making predictions in this context is that we must regulate the…
We apply the principles of quantum mechanics and quantum cosmology to predict probabilities for our local observations of a universe undergoing false vacuum eternal inflation. At a sufficiently fine-grained level, histories of the universe…
Hazard serves as a pivotal estimand in both practical applications and methodological frameworks. However, its causal interpretation poses notable challenges, including inherent selection biases and ill-defined populations to be compared…
The main object of Bayesian statistical inference is the determination of posterior distributions. Sometimes these laws are given for quantities devoid of empirical value. This serious drawback vanishes when one confines oneself to…
Time can be defined as the duration between events. It is irreversible. When used as a variable in quantifying the changing properties of matter, this irreversibility of time is incompatible with Newton's deterministic mechanics and with…
The problem of assigning probabilities when little is known is analized in the case where the quanities of interest are physical observables, i.e. can be measured and their values expressed by numbers. It is pointed out that the assignment…