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Originally Posted by Ken G
I think you are missing the key point that Carter says more than just that we have a 5% chance of being in the first 5%, it also tries to use the fact that we are the 10 billionth born to say that this says something about our total populations.
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No, I understand that.
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Originally Posted by Ken G
I'm saying that you cannot use both of those numbers to generate a third one, like an "expected longevity" of humanity.
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And I'm saying we can, and that the absence of correlation between the "10-billionth group" and the "first 5% group" is entirely to be expected.
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Originally Posted by Ken G
you would have to be able to state Carter's claims without applying it to us, because we're in that subset of 10 billion borns, and there are not 1/20 of us in the corner.
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And that's fine, because we don't care about where we're situated among the superset of all populations everywhere, only about where we're situated in our own population. And we accept the possibility we might be wrong in our prediction.
Grant Hutchison