In this paper, I present a solution to the Doomsday argument based on a third type of solution, by contrast to on the one hand, the Carter-Leslie view and on the other hand, the Eckhardt et al. analysis. I begin by strengthening both competing models by highlighting some variations of their ancestors models, which renders them less vulnerable to some objections. I describe then a third line of ...

THET H E M E O F ‘‘ORGANIZINGTHE INTERNET’’ brings to mind the late 1950s folk-rock singer Jimmie Rodgers’s song titled “The World I Used to Know.”A great many developments have transpired in the world of information science since the seminal works of S. C. Bradford, Claude Shannon, Vannevar Bush, and numerous other pioneers. To those of us who have been in the information science field for sev...

I consider the puzzles arising from four interrelated problems involving “anthropic” reasoning, and in particular the “Self-Sampling Assumption” (SSA) — that one should reason as if one were randomly chosen from the set of all observers in a suitable reference class. The problem of Freak Observers might appear to force acceptance of SSA if any empirical evidence is to be credited. The Sleeping ...

Johne's disease is chronic inflammation of the intestine caused by Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis. Infection and disease are mainly in domestic livestock but can affect many species including primates. Johne's is a new disease which emerged at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and principally involved Europe and North America. It has since spread to former low incidence r...

The prospect of a superbug that could wipe out much of the human race sounds like the stuff of science-fiction novels, Hollywood movies or doomsday prophets. However, such a global pandemic might not be as unlikely as it seems—some would even go so far as to say that it is a certainty, with the only uncertainties being what pathogen will cause it, when it will happen and how well the world will...

The missionary zeal of many Bayesians of old has been matched, in the other direction, by an attitude among some theoreticians that Bayesian methods were absurd—not merely misguided but obviously wrong in principle. We consider several examples, beginning with Feller’s classic text on probability theory and continuing with more recent cases such as the perceived Bayesian nature of the so-called...