Calc. Smith set

[Steve Eppley]

Bruce Anderson wrote:
>On Apr 19,  1:07am, Mike Ossipoff wrote:
>> You said that "Any alternative is a member of the Smith set if it's
>> beaten by no more alternatives than is some member of the Smith set"
>> is "...a tautology at best". What does that mean? 
>
>Since any alternative is beaten by no more alternatives than it (itself) is 
>beaten by, this statement seems to me to be logically equivalent to the 
>statement that "any alternative is a member of the Smith set if it's
>a member of the Smith set".  That's a pretty good example of a tautology.

I think Bruce's criticism would have been more constructive if
instead of just calling Mike's statement a tautology, he had offered
to make it more clear by proposing to insert the word "other"
between "some" and "member", or some other "fix" with the same effect. 

--Steve