Feb 25 23:57 2005 from Jesse Mundis in Lobby> 
We don't really have a philosophy and musings room, so this gets dumped in 
"Lobby. "  Feel free to 02 me off somewhere else. 
    
  The world, and all our human endeavors, comprise a mindbogglingly large  
set of things.  These things are good, bad, indifferent, and pretty much 
saturate any spectrum of qualities you care to name.  Imagine that there 
exists a finite (but very, very large) encyclopedia of everything.  It has 
no index, no complete representation or accounting of its contents, no map 
or thumbnail encapsulation, but it does have an excellent search feature 
such that whatever entry you choose to examine can be brought up.  You 
just have to think to ask.  This is sort of how I feel when I read any 
essay or opinion or polemic about the world.  If one focuses on the 
problems: hunger, hatred, war, disease, tsunamis, gobal warming, oil 
shortage, population explosion, etc...  life seems pretty crappy. 
Regardless of how good *I* have it, my awareness of the suffering of 
others bothers me, and impels me to take certain actions.  On the other 
hand, if I look at the good things: natural beauty, love, rainbows, cures 
for disease, increasing understanding of how the world works, bringing 
down of the berlin wall, landing on the moon, great art and music, etc... 
I can think "Hey, we have our problems, but we are working them. 
 We've done a lot of good."  The problem is, how can we meaningfully  
measure our successes vs our failures?  In most sciences, you do this via 
random sampling of a large data set.  but our 
finite-but-too-large-to-encompass world encyclopedia has no fair way to 
"randomly" sample.  All the samples ar selected by an intersted party. For 
a nerdism-like example, imagine we have a finite, but very large set of 
odd and even integers. 
 Some folks want to "prove" there are more odds than evens, and some the  
opposite.  You can't iterate through the set (it's too large) and you 
can't truly radnomly sample the set, but anybody can suggest a number and 
see if it is in the set.  Both sides can parade arbitrairly long lists of 
even or odd numbers that are in the set, and arbitrarly long lists of 
their opponents numbers that the set lacks. 
 Lists will be proportional to the amount of time and effort each side  
puts into their searches.  the point is, the number and size of any of 
these lists ultimately *proves* nothing about the total, platonic, 
absolutly true ratio of odds to evens in this big, obscure pool. Likewise, 
seeing the good and bad in the world feels like more a function of who is 
looking, and what they wish to find, than it is any sort of accurate 
representation of the true importance, or actual state of things.