It's reasonable, yes. My point is though, what you're doing is
akin to rounding down to zero possibility. Here's why this
matters (to me): In the history of humanity and the Universe,
statistically, I'm dead. I don't exist. I'm rounded to zero.
But, as it turns out, I AM here. So, I'm not hasty in rounding
to zero or one, and I avoid going to concepts as impossible. I'm
not saying that outlook is for everybody, I'm just speaking for
myself which, ultimately, is all i *can* do. Even there, I'm
only speaking for a part of myself but it's the best I can do.
== Ok. My lifespan is about 84-88 years if I'm lucky. I know
this from my genetics and also hope. It could also be 44 years.
[I could be dead in 2 minutes]. I could live longer or shorter
than any of these predictions. However, the Universe is, what 14
billion years old? I don't exist from the perspective of the
whole Universe. In the perspective of the time humanity existed,
I was never born. In the perspecive of the likely length of time
of humanity (I'm expecting many thousands of years more), I will
have been dead for a very long time. So, my time is now and here
at this point in human history and in the history of the
Universe. But if MY lifespan was placed against either
humanity-a-a-whole or universe-as-a-whole, I either don't exist,
wasn't born yet, or I'm dead. Yet, I'm still here. That is what
I mean. In statistics, outliers are removed. You say that it
could take several lifetimes to know everybody on the planet and
that it stands to reason that it's impossible. Yet, how much of
someone needs to be known? Is a name enough? Gender? Their likes
and dislikes? Depending on how little is "enough", you can know
humanity statistically. Or you can sit down and read through a
list of 7+ billion names and faces scrolling by as quickly as
you can process them and you can get to know everybody by name.
So technically, it's not impossible to know everybody at some
level, although it's a huge volume. == I do this on a regular
basis. I have a lot of followers on Vine. For my 10,,000
follower, I tried to capture all 10000 in a single Vine to say
"Thank You". I'm not sure how many I ACTUALLY captured, but it's
fast enough scrolling by that's impossible for a human finger to
catch a name as it scrolls by within the same window, so it's a
lot. [1]
https://vine.co/v/expDganjjPO I like thinking I caught
all 10000, but I suspect at 30 frames per second, 10 names per
frame, 6.8 second total length, it's more likely I caught about
2000 names. Regardless of 2000 or 10000, I know EVERY ONE of the
people on this list. I've seen their faces, I know SOMETHING
about their personalities, who they are as a person. This isn't
even that many. I had 27,0000 unique visitors when I ran a
Minecraft server a few years ago. I was aware of their names and
what their characters look like for most of them, and talked to
thousands of them over a 25 month period. I don't know how many,
but I could check log files. So, maybe that's not everybody.
Maybe it's not millions. Maybe it's not billions. But I don't
think it's unreasonable to say that it's impossible to get to
know everybody (at some level), but it would take some
dedication or cleverness. == I personally don't give ontological
status to statistics, but I know MANY people who do. So, I am
acknowledging that possibility. == You say my sample isn't large
enough for a [set] of [humanity]. Yet, what is a [set] of
[humanity]? Are you trying to capture every person who ever
lived for all time? Every person who is living today? Or,
consider this possibility: The [set] of [humanity] extends only
as far as my view point and experience goes. The set of
[humanity] for me, for example, would contain, if I had to add
up people, probably several hundred thousand people I've been in
contact with in my lifetime so far, enough to decide, "this is a
good person" or "this person has issues". Maybe 250,000 or so.
I've been online since 1989, so it's not an unreasonable number
for me and it's likely more. Then there are people I was exposed
to on TV and in the movies, books and stories and such. So, as
far as I'm concerned, this "set of humanity" extends that far
and no further. The rest are "unknown known" or "unknown
unknowns" to me. Not unknowable but unknown to me right now. So
when I speak of "I love humanity!" I'm speaking of the set that
I know enough to say. I'm also speaking of presumptions I have
of humanity, looser readings of history, including my bias
towards it, which can encompass much MORE of humanity. Of course
these are also projections of my own personality upon "the
history of humanity" but not exclusively so as I _do_ have
reasoning capabilities. So, consider the "set of humanity" to be
a personal, relativistic set vs the "I hate people" being the
personal relativist set containing people in my physical
presence that are annoying to me at that moment. I can love the
"set of humanity" that I am aware of while not liking those in
my presence all that much. A subjective data set. == I "ate up"
relativity as a teenager. Loved it. Made total sense to me. They
should teach it from the earliest school grades onwards. They
don't, because we *still* persist with the "objectivity"
illusion and it colors the way we educate people generally. It's
a shame because once you can acknowledge the subjectivity of
objectivity AND be able to enumerate it at some level, it's a
true freedom. I don't have to speak for every person who exists.
I just have to speak for myself as objectively as possible from
my subjective perspective and let the person I'm communicating
with decide whether my perspective has universal applicability
or not. I assume my subjective perspective is not universal,
although of course I hope it is. But, then again, I'm weird like
that. == 'm skeptical but not a classic skepticist. I'm also not
an "everything is relative" person either. There are some things
you can plant a firm basis upon. == I trust my reasoning
capabilities but I know they're not perfect because the
cognitive systems in the brain seem to show that the amygdala
has greater influence upon the prefrontal cortex than the
prefrontal cortex has over the amygdala. People with damaged
amygdalas have been called "living economists". They are as
close to working with "pure reason" as one could expect. The
result? They cannot make the simplest decisions. They can spend
MONTHS deciding over the simplest things. So, I trust my
reasoning but not exclusively. I trust logic yet not exclusively
so. It has flaws built in to it from the beginning, from its
roots. Every system seems to have flaws in it. This doesn't mean
they are to be rejected. But rather, acknowledge the flaws of
the systems while also utilizing them. ==
References
Visible links
1.
https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fvine.co%2Fv%2FexpDganjjPO&h=CAQF8loeG
