frankPodmore

Three possibilities come to mind:

Is there an evolutionary purpose?

Does it arise as a consequence of our mental activities, a sort of side effect of our thinking?

Is it given a priori (something we have to think in order to think at all)?

EDIT: Thanks for all the responses! Just one thing I saw come up a few times I'd like to address: a lot of people are asking 'Why assume this?' The answer is: it's purely rhetorical! That said, I'm happy with a well thought-out 'I dispute the premiss' answer.

Let's say you have multi-member constituencies. You hold an election with an outcome that looks roughly like this:

• Candidate #1 received 12,000 votes

• Candidate #2 received 8,000 votes

• Candidate #3 recieved 4,000 votes

All three get elected to the legislature, but Candidate #1's vote on legislation is worth three times Candidate #3's vote, and #3's vote is worth half Candidate #2's vote.

I know that the British Labour Party used to have bloc voting at conference, where trade union reps' votes were counted as every member of their union voting, so, e.g., if the train drivers' union had 100,000 members, their one rep wielded 100,000 votes. That's not quite what I'm describing above, but it's close.

Bonus question: what do you think would be the pros and cons of such a system?

Follow-up question: was it controversial at the time?

I was thinking about how the American and French Revolutions are sometimes seen, especially by Marxists, as more 'successful' versions of the English Civil War and the Commonwealth.

Nowadays, whenever people suggest even mild leftwing ideas, someone pops up and says 'Sure if you want to end up with STALINISM' so, I was wondering if people said the same thing about Cromwell and the Roundheads before the American Revolution? Like, 'If we get rid of the British, next thing you know they'll be cancelling CHRISTMAS!'

The parallels between Cromwell and Washington are pretty obvious: 'successful revolutionary general defeats the monarch's forces in a war that started as a dispute about tax, then becomes the new head of state' applies to both. Did people at the time see the comparison or were the two men and the two conflicts seen as very different?

I just read Dr. No by Percival Everett. It contains a maths riddle that I cannot get my head around. I tried searching online but I couldn't find any answers.

Here's the riddle:

There are three sheepherders who come to a bridge controlled by a troll and his two sons. He demands of them thirty sheep before they can pass. Each shepherd cuts out ten sheep from his flock and they give them to the troll. Once they have crossed, the troll decides that he should only have asked for twenty-five. He sends his sons after the men with five sheep. The sons decide to keep one sheep each and give three back to the herders. They do. Now it is the case that each shepherd has paid only nine sheep. Nine times three is twenty-seven. The trolls kept two. Twenty-seven plus two is twenty-nine. Where is the missing sheep?

Can anyone help me understand?