>> How can you be sure it's accurate? Maybe it says that there are 20,000 
>> people in city X, but actually only 50% of the population replied. (Or 
>> something.)
>>
>> Sure, you have birth certificates and death certificates, but again, 
>> how do we know those cover *everybody*? (Surely it must be pretty 
>> comprehensive, but totally? Hmm.)
> 
> People know they are not counting everyone so they also estimate how 
> many they missed. I leave that one as an exercise to the reader.

Hmm. Looks unsolvable...

>>>> I still like Warp's "grains of rice" example. (If only I could 
>>>> remember who the hell it was about...)
>>>
>>> Is that the one where you put one gain of rice in a corner of a 
>>> chessboard and double it on the next square? until you have 2^63 at 
>>> the last one?
>>
>> Yeah, that one.
> 
> Then it is nor Warp's but slightly older, assuming that Warp is as old 
> as he claims and not one of the secret millennium old persons.

Well no, but he mentioned it most recently. ;-)

(I actually read about it originally from Simon Singh...)

>> Ah. So you mean, by telling somebody something you're assumed to be 
>> implying that it will happen in an unusual way? (E.g., "soon".)
> 
> In most cases, yes. In your case it may simple serve as a form of self 
> mutilation by proxy.

You may have something there...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On Wed, 03 Dec 2008 21:47:26 +0000, Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:

>
>Heh. That's amusing... I've been in 3 fights in my entire life. If you 
>can even call them that. And hell, I get breathless just walking up 
>stairs. :-P
>

Well I've only been in about 3 real ones myself and no one got hurt.

>Still, you can see why I generally just don't talk to *anybody*. It's a 
>reasonably good way to avoid being punched. Just for good measure, I try 
>not to look people in the eye either...

That can work both ways sometimes it is a good idea.
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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On 03-Dec-08 23:02, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> How can you be sure it's accurate? Maybe it says that there are 
>>> 20,000 people in city X, but actually only 50% of the population 
>>> replied. (Or something.)
>>>
>>> Sure, you have birth certificates and death certificates, but again, 
>>> how do we know those cover *everybody*? (Surely it must be pretty 
>>> comprehensive, but totally? Hmm.)
>>
>> People know they are not counting everyone so they also estimate how 
>> many they missed. I leave that one as an exercise to the reader.
> 
> Hmm. Looks unsolvable...

Think again. Does the police know what houses are used by illegal 
immigrants? Do they know how many people live in such houses? Did they 
raid some of them before? Do kids go to school? Do illegal immigrants 
sometimes go to see a doctor? Do they work? Are shops and workplaces 
sometimes checked if everybody is legal? Do they have accounts at the banks?
There are numerous occasions where you can find out something about 
illegal people not who they are but at least how many.

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andrel wrote:
> There are numerous occasions where you can find out something about 
> illegal people not who they are but at least how many.

Plus, you can do something like mail out the forms to ten cities, then go 
door to do through one entire city asking explicitly, and see what the 
difference is and multiply by ten.  I.e., you can take a small sample to 
estimate how many people don't answer.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   The NFL should go international. I'd pay to
   see the Detroit Lions vs the Roman Catholics.

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"andrel" <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote in message
news:493### [at] hotmailcom...
> On 03-Dec-08 10:15, Invisible wrote:
> > Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> >
> >> Aaaaa we're all gonna die! *runs around waving arms in the air*
> >
> > There are few things more certain in life.
> >
> > And yet, when I point out this fact, people look at me all surprised...

> What I sometimes do is point out that there probably have been born less
> than 12 billion people in total.

I think the "accepted" figure is about 5 times as many, not that it makes
much difference.

> 6 of them are still alive, hence the
> statistical support for the idea that everybody dies is rather weak.

Look at it another way: So far, there are billions for, none against, the
argument that humans don't live beyond, say, 130. It all depends on how you
define death.

One can also make statistical arguments for the doomsday scenario based on
the principle that our particular existence not likely to be particularly
significant along the human timeline.

But that might even be an argument for immortality instead of doomsday (if
there are to live only 120 billion total humans, last 60 practically
immortal, we again end up in the middle).

Then again, that argument leads to a "suprise exam" type paradox: Principle
of mediocrity implies that no generation will ever believe they can possibly
be the last human generation.

FWIW, I tend to believe near-immortality will be achieved within, say, 200
years. In that respect, we would be an extremely unluckly generation.

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Hmm. How the **** do people compute numbers like this? I mean, how can
> you *possibly* know how many people are alive right now? Obviously it's
> an estimate, but how do we tell if it's even remotely correct? It's not
> like you can *check* it!

That is relatively easy to figure out. Add up census results.

Countries without a census are probably small enough not to matter too much;
and otherwise there are still other ways to measure how many people are in
a country.

What I can't figure out is how the **** people know how many humans were
born in the whole history of the planet.

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> What I can't figure out is how the **** people know how many humans were
> born in the whole history of the planet.

Because people have been taking census for longer than the fundamentalists 
think the world has existed. It's not all *that* hard to extrapolate 
population growth, if it's relatively smooth for the last, oh, eight 
thousand years or so.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   The NFL should go international. I'd pay to
   see the Detroit Lions vs the Roman Catholics.

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Darren New wrote:
> Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
>> What I can't figure out is how the **** people know how many humans were
>> born in the whole history of the planet.
> 
> Because people have been taking census for longer than the 
> fundamentalists think the world has existed. It's not all *that* hard to 
> extrapolate population growth, if it's relatively smooth for the last, 
> oh, eight thousand years or so.

Oddly enough, we apparently have records of the price of cotton going 
back several millennia. o_O

PS. It's fractal.

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Invisible wrote:
> Oddly enough, we apparently have records of the price of cotton going 
> back several millennia. o_O

Yeah, oddly enough, they have lists of who went to which gala parties, and 
the price of cotton, but nobody ever wrote down that the sun stopped in the 
sky, or that thousands of people died on the same day, or etc. :-) Funny how 
that works out.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   The NFL should go international. I'd pay to
   see the Detroit Lions vs the Roman Catholics.

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On 03-Dec-08 23:59, somebody wrote:
> "andrel" <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote in message
> news:493### [at] hotmailcom...
>> On 03-Dec-08 10:15, Invisible wrote:
>>> Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
>>>
>>>> Aaaaa we're all gonna die! *runs around waving arms in the air*
>>> There are few things more certain in life.
>>>
>>> And yet, when I point out this fact, people look at me all surprised...
> 
>> What I sometimes do is point out that there probably have been born less
>> than 12 billion people in total.
> 
> I think the "accepted" figure is about 5 times as many, not that it makes
> much difference.
I vaguely remember also seeing some larger number, but I don't know 
where. Nor what is the 'accepted' figure and by who? My estimate would 
be that 60 billion is much too large perhaps unless you count every 
humanoid for the last 5 million years and not homo sapiens for the last 
50000. Anyway one more reason for Andy to start working, I'd say.

> 
>> 6 of them are still alive, hence the
>> statistical support for the idea that everybody dies is rather weak.
> 
> Look at it another way: So far, there are billions for, none against,  the
> argument that humans don't live beyond, say, 130.

That suspiciously looks like an argument that because in the US no brick 
buildings exist that are older than 200 years brick building can not be 
older than 200 years. ;) Or 3 millennia if you include the rest of the 
world.
You can never rule out someone like Wowbagger, the infinitely prolonged, 
is among us or will be next century.

> It all depends on how you define death.

> 
> One can also make statistical arguments for the doomsday scenario based on
> the principle that our particular existence not likely to be particularly
> significant along the human timeline.

statistical <-> not likely?

> But that might even be an argument for immortality instead of doomsday (if
> there are to live only 120 billion total humans, last 60 practically
> immortal, we again end up in the middle).
> 
> Then again, that argument leads to a "suprise exam" type paradox: Principle
> of mediocrity implies that no generation will ever believe they can possibly
> be the last human generation.
> 
> FWIW, I tend to believe near-immortality will be achieved within, say, 200
> years. In that respect, we would be an extremely unluckly generation.

I sure hope not. I'd like everybody to die before 100 if you don't mind.

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