The Philosophy Department had the first talk in its Colloquium series today, "The End is Nigh: An Adventure in Rational Eschatology," by Peter van Inwagen. It sounds more interesting than it was. While it would, I think, make an interesting paper to read, having to listen to it being read was deadeningly dull, and it has the dubious distinction of being the first Colloquium talk that bored me to the point of nodding off. The topic of the paper was the so-called Doomsday Argument (see here for a simpler presentation), and most of the talk was just about the application of Bayes' Theorem. It consisted chiefly of intuition pumps, which contributed in great measure to my boredom.
I suppose no one can be interested in everything!
