[ExI] Beowulf

[Randall Randall]

On Nov 24, 2007, at 4:09 PM, hkhenson wrote:
> At 06:23 AM 11/24/2007, David wrote:
>> To me, the way to answer most questions like this is to simplify them
>> to one involving two or three people.
>
> That's not entirely legit. Very small numbers of people invoke
> different mental modules than larger ones. See "The Nurture
> Assumption" for a discussion of relations vs groups.

Unless you're suggesting that our intuitions about very small
numbers of people are less likely to be reasonable, it seems
that such reasoning extended to large groups (about what "should"
be) would be *more* legitimate, for exactly that reason.

If someone's taken a nasty knock to the head and is confused,
hitting yourself in the head before thinking about his situation
is not likely to make you more able to figure out what he should
do.


--
Randall Randall <randall at randallsquared.com>
"In just the past few centuries, and primarily in only
  one or two parts of the world, we suddenly develop
  medical science, cars, telephones, airplanes,
  refrigeration, central heating, electrical power,
  computers, and spaceships. Why here? And why now?"