Re: OT: n guilty men: what is n? [Was: Re: FSF condemns partnership between Mozilla and Adobe...]
On Tuesday 20 May 2014 16:03:21 Alois Mahdal wrote:
> On Tue, 20 May 2014 09:45:00 -0400
>
> Celejar <celejar@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >> On 5/20/14, Celejar <celejar@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >>> But this is precisely the problem with some of the
> > > >>> dogmatic idealists here - by this logic, we should
> > > >>> abolish criminal justice entirely, as it's virtually
> > > >>> impossible to guarantee that "no one blameless" will
> > > >>> ever be "persecuted":
> > > >>> http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/guilty.htm
>
> [...]
>
> > If you take the trouble to follow the link I posted above,
> > you'll see an entire paper - one of the most brilliantly
> > erudite and funniest things I have ever read - devoted to
> > that question.
>
> I am confused about the meaning of n. He first states that
>
> n = (P - 10) / 10; # P being population of Sodom,
>
> so n has no particular known weight or meaning: Is it n = 1 if
> we save 1 innocent for 1 guilty? Is it n = 10 if we save 1
> innocent for 10 guilty? That would almost make sense except
> that it would silently imply P = 110.
>
> Then, in the rest of the article, he refers to n but, failing
> to explain the meaning of it, I don't see any point of reading
> it.
>
> Did I miss something?
Yes - that it is OT and doesn't matter.
Lisi
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