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And Rosta scripsit:
> To get to McGovern as pres in 1972, you have to find the
> 1972 node ancestral to our here and now, and then work out
> as short as reasonably possible a path to McGovern being pres. You
> need to locate worlds that are cousins of our world such that
> they are like our world except that a few extra tens or hundreds
> of thousands of people voted for McGovern instead of Nixon. (Pardon
> my crap history if it is wrong. Remember I'm the person who thinks
> there are 51 states in the USA.) That's not too hard.
Historical note:
Actually, I picked it because it is hard: McGovern lost massively,
carrying 1 state out of 50. You win the U.S. presidency by running
simultaneously in 50 distinct contests. For each state you win, you get
a number of points based on the population of the state. Whoever gets the
most points is elected President. That is why George W. Bush is President
although if you aggregated the votes in each state -- which is not done
officially -- you would find that a plurality voted for his opponent.
In any event, millions of votes at least must be changed to elect McGovern.
But it could have happened (pace Xod-3).
I think your scheme is useful but unsound, like the phoneme or Newtonian
mechanics. The unsoundness comes when people raise the question, "But in
possible world X, who is Nixon and who is McGovern?" A sound formulation
blocks this pseudo-question.
--
A mosquito cried out in his pain, John Cowan
"A chemist has poisoned my brain!" http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
The cause of his sorrow http://www.reutershealth.com
Was para-dichloro- jcowan@hidden.email
Diphenyltrichloroethane. (aka DDT)