well there's that and then there's the completely arbitrary threshhold you're posing here.
the infant grows a soul/personality at age 2.56666678 mars years.
The point is that, though the infant may not be able to "say" anything in its defense, the kid or adult that eventually emerges from said infant may feel weird about its early childhood having been exposed to the world. A society's supposed to take care of those who can't take care of themselves, not take advantage of them.
confidence intervals ARE linked to population size. the variance of a consistent estimator goes down to zero, meaning that the confidence interval aymptotically reduces to a spike around the true parameter in question. i don't know whether or not a billion is enough to approximate asymptotically, but my guess is that it is.
Slashdot Mirror
well there's that and then there's the completely arbitrary threshhold you're posing here. the infant grows a soul/personality at age 2.56666678 mars years.
The point is that, though the infant may not be able to "say" anything in its defense, the kid or adult that eventually emerges from said infant may feel weird about its early childhood having been exposed to the world. A society's supposed to take care of those who can't take care of themselves, not take advantage of them.
confidence intervals ARE linked to population size. the variance of a consistent estimator goes down to zero, meaning that the confidence interval aymptotically reduces to a spike around the true parameter in question. i don't know whether or not a billion is enough to approximate asymptotically, but my guess is that it is.