I suspect that many of the commenters here are implicitly assuming that J. Richard Gott’s Doomsday Argument makes a prediction that delivers some element of certainty about when a phenomenon will end. However, I think the Doomsday Argument only guides one toward the best way to bet given very sparse knowledge about the phenomenon. And ones current best bet may well be very inaccurate indeed as Wretchard indicated when he warned , “It (the Doomsday Argument) falls down if we know that we are on some special part of the distribution.” (Jun 23, 2008 – 3:21 pm)

Granting for the sake of discussion that US colleges and universities are IQ sorting machines with a priveleged near-monopoly position for providing that service, and the content of the educ—–, ahem, seat time matters little to employers, then why don’t we see employers hiring young people with no more than an acceptance letter in hand?