Posted by Mark Parnell on 06/01/06 23:16

Deciding to do something for the good of humanity, Toby Inkster
<usenet200605@tobyinkster.co.uk> declared in alt.html:

> But that's not really the point. The point is that anything that exists has a
> certain set of properties.

I suppose anything that exists will have some sort of properties, though
they aren't necessarily going to have the same properties as other
things.

> Some of these properties (such as height perhaps)
> can be expressed numerically.

Not necessarily. You're limiting your definition of existence to the
physical universe.

> It is almost inevitable that in some way that
> number will be too high or too low for some pleasant result to occur

A "pleasant" result is subjective.

You are imperfect, therefore perfection cannot be measured against your
preferences.

> as
> per my previous example, too tall to fit in a particular gold box -- thus the
> property cannot have a perfect value, so the thing that exists cannot be
> perfect.

Then it is your box (or your desire that the other object fit in it)
that is imperfect.

> Taking gravity as an example, we can choose the strength of G, the gravitational
> constant to be our numerical property. Clearly G is just a tiny bit stronger
> than perfect for us earthlings as Earth is currently slowly edging towards the
> sun and will probably (in a few billion years) spiral into it.

But we are not perfect, so the (im)perfection of G cannot be judged
against what we want.

To judge whether something is perfect, you must have a perfect standard
to compare it to.

--
Mark Parnell
My Usenet is improved; yours could be too:
http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html

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