Quote Originally Posted by DuB View Post
I don't see why this is a controversial conclusion. Probabilistic conclusions are not particularly strong, binding conclusions after all. I assume you wouldn't object to the conclusion of this same argument if instead of talking about humans, we were talking about something more mundane like the total number of times that lightning will strike during a discrete thunder storm.
This is a little disappointing that even you've fallen for this. What about the fact that there is no "we", there is only each separate living individual experiencing life? If you constructed the probabilities taking into account each person's lifespan, not just the "year", then you might get different results. In other words, consider the probability of living at this time as person #161,706,435,603 versus living at this time as person #161,706,435,604. In other words, the argument only works if you consider the human species as one entity.

About the context, on the contrary. I think people with pre-conceived bias about the lifetime of our species (because they think we'll die in nuclear fire or whatever) are more likely to fall for this ambiguous probabilistic argument because it supports their bias. If we were talking about lightning strikes, the absurdity would become more clear to everyone because no one has a psychological attachment to thunder storms.