Steve, would you care to elucidate what's ridiculous about the Doomsday argument? I'd be especially interested in an explanation based on the "limitations of statistics" as opposed to a hand-waving argument. The Doomsday argument strikes most people as absurd on its face, and yet it's surprisingly resistant to refutation. My own opinion is that it's not absurd at all, and is among the ideas that reveal a deep truth about reality.