BTW: voting doesn't count: Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. On Sat, Jul 9, 2011 at 9:22 PM, Owen Densmore <[email protected]> wrote:
> For my homework in philosophy (and sins in life), I've been observing a > modern philosopher, who I enjoy, giving a series of lectures. > http://www.justiceharvard.org/ > The discussion has been on fitting schools of philosophy to events in human > life. > > The current (second video, 4th lecture) is on Utilitarianism. In > particular, on how to derive a utility function especially when human life > is at stake. The initial readings are on Jeremy Bentham. > > Listening to the students, who are the foil, so to speak, for the speaker, > the major problem is how to assign a number, say a dollar figure, to the > worth of things that are not generally sold .. such as human life or whether > or not it is even possible. > > Fascinating historic examples include the risk-benefit analys of smoking in > the czech republic (it gained the government $1,200+ per premature death) > and the Ford Pinto exploding fuel tank ($130 million to fix vs $45 million > in losses, including human life). > > It occurred to me that it was yet again a difficulty of mathematics. The > assumption of both the audience and the speaker, at least at this point in > the series, is that all "numbers" have a metric, which of course we know is > only an interesting subset of say vector spaces. > > So how was it that an entire school of philosophy, one with great adherents > and even a really rational outlook, fail to understand that not all > "numbers" have a metric? That high dimensional spaces do not include > comparison functions? > > -- Owen >
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