Extraterrestrial intelligence and doomsday: A critical assessment of the no-outsider requirement

Abstract

The so-called Doomsday Argument has attracted a lot of attention in recent years. One of the suggested ways to make this argument ineffective is the so-called No-Outsider requirement, indicating that the presence of other intelligent observers (?aliens?) beside humans invalidates the reasoning leading to the apocalyptic conclusion. Obviously, this argumentation bears relevance not only to the effectiveness of the Doomsday Argument, but also to the issues like the relativization of the reference class in anthropic reasoning, transhumanism and the SETI theory. Hereby we critically investigate the No-Outsider Requirement and conclude that it is either fallacious or irrelevant.Takozvani "Argument Sudnjeg dana" privukao je dosta paznje u naucnim i filozofskim krugovima poslednjih godina. Jedan od nacina predlozenih da se neprihvatljiv zakljucak ovog argumenta neutralise jeste tzv. "zahtev za odsustvom tudjinaca" koji sugerise da prisustvo drugih inteligentnih posmatraca ("tudjinaca") obesmisljava rezonovanje koje vodi ka apokaliptickom zakljucku. Ocigledno, ova argumentacija je relevantna ne samo za efikasnost argumenta Sudnjeg dana, vec i za pitanja kao sto su referentna klasa u antropickom rasudjivanju, transhumanizam i teorija SETI projekata. U ovom radu mi kriticki preispitujemo zahtev za odsustvom tudjinaca i zakljucujemo da je on ili pogresan ili irelevantan.