Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
Finally, a Label
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2003 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
A Slate writer slams Bill McKibben's Enough, and in passing mentions the Copernican Principle: You Are Not Special. "More precisely, the principle says that, as a matter of statistical necessity, most observers must be 'typical.' So, if a given set of observers believe in a scenario that makes them highly atypical, they are almost certainly mistaken." Useful.