RE: [lojban] Re: partial recantation in favour of solomonics

["And Rosta" <a.rosta@lycos.co.uk>]

Avital:
> From: "John Cowan" <jcowan@reutershealth.com>
> 
> > And Rosta scripsit:
> >
> > > But actually I think you and me and xod agree. Provided we indicate
> > > the world where unicorns exist, everybody's happy 
> >
> > Indeed. But xod rejected that strategy, saying he preferred to remain
> > in the real world. And in the real world, "50% of unicorns are male"
> > has indeterminate truth value 
> 
> I don't see why this is your view. Let A be the number of unicorns. Let B be
> the number of male unicorns. You seem to understand the sentence "50% of
> unicorns are male" as "B/A = 50%" (obviously this is incorrect. B/A is
> undefined). I, on the other hand, understand the sentence as "B * 50% = A",
> which is true. This allows speaking of 50% of unicorns and yet staying
> mathematically consistent 

Are you asking why understand it as "B/A = 50%" rather than "B * 50%
= A"? (Or "A * 50% = B"????)

I'd need to think about that some more.

But one thing to bear in mind is that both A and B can be infinite.
For example, "50% of integers are even", "most integers are not
prime". So it may be that strictly speaking we aren't talking
ordinary fractions here.

--And.