November 01, 2003

It's like the King

Posted by Kieran

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.

Posted on November 1, 2003 11:52 AM UTC
Comments

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.

Posted by pierre-olivier · November 1, 2003 03:35 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.)

Posted by Brian Weatherson · November 1, 2003 03:44 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).)

Posted by eszter · November 1, 2003 07:57 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).

Posted by DonBoy · November 1, 2003 10:33 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.

Posted by Eve Garrard · November 1, 2003 11:12 PM

Limiting case: all people die (assume the sun goes nova or something)! Implications for oldest person?

Posted by Aramis Martinez · November 2, 2003 04:00 PM

ps. it should be read to imply a simultaneous experience.

Posted by aramis martinez · November 2, 2003 04:02 PM

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.

Posted by Brian McDaniel · November 3, 2003 01:02 AM

this is an old linguistic paradox, epitomized in the cry “the king is dead, long live the king”

Posted by michael roetzel · November 3, 2003 03:17 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.

Posted by John · November 3, 2003 06:35 AM

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

Posted by rea · November 3, 2003 05:09 PM
Followups

This discussion has been closed. Thanks to everyone who contributed.