This is really Brian’s department, but a report that the world’s oldest person has passed away at the age of 116 leads me to ask whether it is, in fact, analytically possible for the world’s oldest person to die.
This in turn reminds me of a story that the late Dick Jeffrey once told me. While sitting on a bus in London in the early ’70s, he overheard two pensioners complaining about the newfangled decimal currency. They both agreed that change and progress were good things. But they thought it would have been better if instead of rushing to introduce the new money right away the Government had waited until all the old people had died.
{ 11 comments }
pierre-olivier 11.01.03 at 3:35 pm
Ah! Very funny. This remind me of a story once heard about the French national railway company, the mighty SNCF. Statistics showed that the last car of a train is more prone to accidents (derailments and the like). In an effort to improve security, SNCF decided to suppress the last car of each train.
Brian Weatherson 11.01.03 at 3:44 pm
Well, if everyone dies, the world’s oldest person dies, so I guess it’s analytically possible. (Philosophers always look to the extreme cases.)
eszter 11.01.03 at 7:57 pm
This is a very amusing thread. The following isn’t fully related, but I’m reminded of it so I thought I’d share.:) In Hungarian, it’s very common to say “very last” instead of “last”. This is done sometimes in English as well (“they were the very last in the race”), but not nearly as common. It’s quite redundant though. What would be the difference between being last and very last? (Full disclosure: despite my being conscious of this, I do say “very last” in Hungarian quite often (well, in proportion to how often I use that language).)
DonBoy 11.01.03 at 10:33 pm
But they thought it would have been better if instead of rushing to introduce the new money right away the Government had waited until all the old people had died.
Somewhere in there is the solution to the Social Security funding problem (assuming you think there is one).
Eve Garrard 11.01.03 at 11:12 pm
Doesn’t it depend on whether the phrase ‘the world’s oldest person’ is a rigid designator or not? If it’s a rigid designator, picking out the particular individual who has the property of being the world’s oldest person, then of course that individual can die. If however it’s not a rigid designator, and tracks the property of being the world’s oldest person through all its peregrinations, then the world’s oldest person is (of course) always alive and never dead.
Aramis Martinez 11.02.03 at 4:00 pm
Limiting case: all people die (assume the sun goes nova or something)! Implications for oldest person?
aramis martinez 11.02.03 at 4:02 pm
ps. it should be read to imply a simultaneous experience.
Brian McDaniel 11.03.03 at 1:02 am
Well, I’m a lawyer and the first thing that lept to my mind was that the answer is poorley specified. It should say that person X, which person was, immediately before such person’s death, the oldest alive person.
michael roetzel 11.03.03 at 3:17 am
this is an old linguistic paradox, epitomized in the cry “the king is dead, long live the king”
John 11.03.03 at 6:35 am
“While sitting on a bus in London in the early ‘70s, he overheard two pensioners complaining about the newfangled decimal currency. They both agreed that change and progress were good things. But they thought it would have been better if instead of rushing to introduce the new money right away the Government had waited until all the old people had died.”
My wife tells exactly the same story with the location being North Queensland.
rea 11.03.03 at 5:09 pm
Dying is something only the living can do–dead people can’t die. Therefore, while the oldest living person can’t be dead, he or she can certainly die
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