An ordinary connotation of “How many X are there?” is that there aren’t any well-known reasons for there to be no X at all. If I ask you how many apples there are and you later find out that it’s actually a maple tree outside, then you would likely consider me not to be communicating in good faith — to be asking the question to make a point rather than to actually obtain information about apples.
I get your point. To add further weight to it, the snippet above is from an informal, likely fast paced IM conversation. Which makes considered analysis pedantic and socially uncalibrated.
That said, I found the 10 to 1000 estimate surprising.
The person asking the question hasn’t seen the tree.
He is merely picking one out of the woods.
Say a tree has 100 apples. Come late autumn any apples will fall, to ten, to one, and then to none.
The fact that ordinary apple trees ordinarily have no apples at least raises the possibility.
0 to 1000 apples would certainly be correct. Which is what we want.
How many dollars are in my wallet? (I haven’t looked.)
Apple trees have zero apples most of the time.
Non-apple trees have no apples all of the time.
The quoted estimate sounds poorly calibrated and likely wrong.
An ordinary connotation of “How many X are there?” is that there aren’t any well-known reasons for there to be no X at all. If I ask you how many apples there are and you later find out that it’s actually a maple tree outside, then you would likely consider me not to be communicating in good faith — to be asking the question to make a point rather than to actually obtain information about apples.
I get your point. To add further weight to it, the snippet above is from an informal, likely fast paced IM conversation. Which makes considered analysis pedantic and socially uncalibrated.
That said, I found the 10 to 1000 estimate surprising.
The person asking the question hasn’t seen the tree. He is merely picking one out of the woods.
Say a tree has 100 apples. Come late autumn any apples will fall, to ten, to one, and then to none.
The fact that ordinary apple trees ordinarily have no apples at least raises the possibility.
0 to 1000 apples would certainly be correct. Which is what we want.
How many dollars are in my wallet? (I haven’t looked.)