Will the human race become extinct fairly shortly? Have the dangers been underestimated, and ought we to care? In seeking to answer these questions, Leslie (Universes, Routledge, 1990) examines many "doom soon" scenarios but specifically centers on mathematician Brandon Carter's "Doomsday Argument," which applies bayesian reasoning to the idea that the risk of human extinction has usually been underestimated. Leslie has built on Carter's Doomsday Argument, stating that it doesn't generate risk estimates but is rather an "argument for revising the...estimates that we generate when we consider various possible dangers." Even so, Leslie estimates that the entire human race has a 30 percent chance of annihilation by nuclear war, disease, or some other means in the next 500 years. This intriguing work may be of interest to philosophers, population studies scholars, biologists, and human ecologists and is recommended for academic libraries.?Susan Maret, Auraria Lib., University of Colorado, Denver
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The End of the World: The Science and Ethics of Human Extinction
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