Re: tautology

From: <GSLevy.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1999 13:49:42 EDT

In a message dated 99-09-12 22:42:10 EDT, Jacques Mallah write:

<< So let me talk about what does make sense, the ASSA. Assume that
 most people are Chinese. If you are a person that doesn't know his
 nationality, you would be justified in guessing that you are probably
 Chinese, based on the ASSA that your observation is drawn from a set with
 uniform weighting per capita. If everyone made this guess, most of them
 would be right, and of course some of them would be wrong unless the
 probability was 100%.
>>

Actually there are more mice than chimese. Therefore using Jacques'
absolutist argument it makes pefectly good sense to expect to be a mouse. Or
whatever... There are more ants than mice... therefore we should be an ant...
or there are more sentient aliens with five appendages on alpha centauri
therefore we should be a sentient alien with five appendages....It seems that
somehow we are missing the boat by not framing the question according to our
own frame of reference... which would make the issue a relative issue.

One way out for Jacques is to assume that humans are the only sentient
creatures in the whole universe... actually the whole plenitude. Talk about
an anti-Copernican, anthropocentric point of view!

George Levy
Received on Mon Sep 13 1999 - 10:54:30 PDT