Word: argumentation
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...first scene is an argument between Virtue and Fortune (Cathy Ellis). Amor intervenes and claims he can show them a superior power. The ensuing action hinges on Nero, played by Christian Quilici '01. Nero seduces Poppea (Tonia D'Amelio '00), sending his wife Octavia (a vitally austere Eleanor Hubbard '01) and Poppea's ex-boyfriend Otto (Carolann Buff) on a plot to murder Poppea. The outcome, the defiant coronation of Poppea and the happy banishment of Otto and his new girl (Drusilla, ably sung by Genithia Hogges `01), is supposed to be a testament to the power of love...
...Princeton] is just another argument on the pile in favor of universal keycard access," said Noah Z. Seton '00, a member of the Undergraduate Council who has led the effort for universal access...
...more likely to arrive during a long interval between buses than you are to arrive during a short interval between buses due to the fact that there are more total minutes in the long intervals than there are in the short intervals. The problem comes when Aczel extends this argument to the discussion of life in the universe. He says that if "God creates you and randomly sends you...to live on some planet...a longer-living civilization has a higher chance of receiving you than one that has existed for a short time," and uses this observation, in concert...
...claim that we are probably one of the most advanced civilizations around, Aczel points out that a 30-year-old has a higher average life expectancy than a newborn because a 30-year-old can no longer die at an age younger than 30. He extends this argument to say that if life on Earth has survived as long as it has, it has a longer life expectancy than life in the universe in general. This is a reasonable statement, when applied to life in general. But Aczel is talking about intelligent life, and in particular, intelligent life that...
...extraterrestrial life. Aczel gives no convincing reason why we should choose one in a trillion as our base probability, and we really have no way of knowing whether his number is correct even to a few orders of magnitude. With so many uncertainties involved, Aczel's statistical argument is attractive, but it does not warrant his unqualified conclusion that, "The probability of extraterrestrial life is 1.00, or a number that for all purposes is 1.00. We are not alone...