I strongly agree with you that trying to quantify a "beginning" to a "line" of humans is arbitrary (and from a biological standpoint, slightly insane in the classic "chicken and egg" way). In fact, speciation is arbitrary, often disagreed about by classification biologists, and for all purposes meaningless in a thought-experiment like this. Given this, there is no finite number of human beings, because we do not know where "humanity" starts. (I rather like this idea, and I like the idea that I am connected, albeit in the distant past, to beings who were quite different from me.)
Also, I am inclined (with my limited-but-not-entirely-trivial understanding of statistics) to doubt the "cubicle number" influence in the first part of the thought-experiment. Why would knowing your own cubicle number affect the probability of which 50% chance had happened? Certainly, if your number was higher than ten, you have your answer. What I do not understand is how if the number is lower than ten it affects the 50% probability at all. I have examined this several times and don't see that it does. Do you (or anyone else) have an understanding of the math involved here? I really don't.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2007-04-17 05:45 pm (UTC)Also, I am inclined (with my limited-but-not-entirely-trivial understanding of statistics) to doubt the "cubicle number" influence in the first part of the thought-experiment. Why would knowing your own cubicle number affect the probability of which 50% chance had happened? Certainly, if your number was higher than ten, you have your answer. What I do not understand is how if the number is lower than ten it affects the 50% probability at all. I have examined this several times and don't see that it does. Do you (or anyone else) have an understanding of the math involved here? I really don't.