Thanks for this. This certainly sounds plausible, though whether the premature and post-mature predictions would exactly cancel out isn’t obvious. (Not sure without trying the maths, and it may or may not be tricky—this is what actuaries are for.)
Also I’m not sure whether it requires the life expectancy predictions to be made on the same basis for everyone (e.g. life expectancy tables) or if it would still work for individually tailored predictions.
I can see this could dissolve most of the paradox, but (as I threw as many confusions as I could think of into the post!) I sense one may still remain about tailored predictions. At the extreme, in a deterministic world, God could calculate our individual time of death when we’re born. All his life expectancy predictions made at any time would be correct, and he wouldn’t be surprised when we die; but nonetheless dying age 20 would still be premature. (And not just because we can’t make perfect predictions.) Possibly ‘premature’ means slightly different things in different contexts.
Thanks for this. This certainly sounds plausible, though whether the premature and post-mature predictions would exactly cancel out isn’t obvious. (Not sure without trying the maths, and it may or may not be tricky—this is what actuaries are for.)
Also I’m not sure whether it requires the life expectancy predictions to be made on the same basis for everyone (e.g. life expectancy tables) or if it would still work for individually tailored predictions.
I can see this could dissolve most of the paradox, but (as I threw as many confusions as I could think of into the post!) I sense one may still remain about tailored predictions. At the extreme, in a deterministic world, God could calculate our individual time of death when we’re born. All his life expectancy predictions made at any time would be correct, and he wouldn’t be surprised when we die; but nonetheless dying age 20 would still be premature. (And not just because we can’t make perfect predictions.) Possibly ‘premature’ means slightly different things in different contexts.