There’s nothing wrong with using relative measurements, and using absolute measurements doesn’t resolve the problem. (It hides from the problem, but that’s not the same thing.)
The actual resolution is explained in the wiki article better than I could.
I agree that the naive version of the elephants problem is isomorphic to the envelopes problem. But the envelopes problem doesn’t reveal an actual difficulty with choosing between two envelopes, and the naive elephants problem as described doesn’t reveal an actual difficulty with choosing between humans and elephants. They just reveal a particular math error that humans are bad at noticing.
There’s nothing wrong with using relative measurements, and using absolute measurements doesn’t resolve the problem. (It hides from the problem, but that’s not the same thing.)
The actual resolution is explained in the wiki article better than I could.
I agree that the naive version of the elephants problem is isomorphic to the envelopes problem. But the envelopes problem doesn’t reveal an actual difficulty with choosing between two envelopes, and the naive elephants problem as described doesn’t reveal an actual difficulty with choosing between humans and elephants. They just reveal a particular math error that humans are bad at noticing.