Contra DeBoer On Temporal Copernicanism

Rebuts Freddie deBoer's 'temporal Copernican principle' (we shouldn't expect a singularity/apocalypse in our ~0.03%-of-history lifetime). Sanity check: the closest apocalyptic near-misses (Petrov 1983, the biggest recent climate shock) were BOTH in deBoer's lifetime, so the 'uniform across calendar time' assumption fails. Scott's framework: three event-distribution types - uniform across calendar time (asteroids; deBoer's right), uniform across humans (7% of humans alive today; the Shakespeare problem), and uniform across techno-economic advances (the right frame for nukes/singularity; via log-GDP/TFP, ~15-30% of progress is in your lifetime). Estimates ~30% chance of an agriculture/industry-magnitude revolution and ~7% apocalypse in your lifetime - not absurdly small. Notes deBoer is reinventing anthropic reasoning (Bostrom) badly, and that priors are easy-come-easy-go (update on observations).

Quality 72 · Strong. Strong - a sharp, numerate rebuttal with a useful clarifying framework (the three event distributions) and the anthropic-reasoning correction; the techno-economic-progress framing for singularity-probability is a genuine analytical contribution. Held at Strong as a topical (and snarky) deBoer rebuttal applying existing anthropics/Ord ideas.

Claude’s paradigm shift 50 · Moderate. Moderate - the three-distributions framing is a fresh clarifying angle, building on Toby Ord and standard anthropics.

Real-world impact 2 · Minor. Within-discourse existential-risk/anthropics essay; no material effect.