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Comment by inimino | Hacker News Reader

"Almost all of us have an above average number of legs."

Maybe. Body brokers are companies that own cadavers and sell them for medical research. The people who own these and similar companies have large numbers of legs and probably raise the average number of legs more than the few people who have one or fewer legs.

If we were betting on average leg ownership in the US I'd bet on slightly more than 2.

Your argument doesn't make sense.

Those legs came from people which had at most two of them. They don't manufacture legs or whatever.

But those people are dead. So if you count up all the live legs, which will be slightly less than 2*live people, and then add in the dead legs, this may be somewhat more than 2*live people. And since the humor in GP comment is attributing the "having" of the legs to the owners of the cadavers, the denominator remains 'live people'. Thus the average number of legs to "have" is greater than 2.

Why do you count dead legs, but choose not to count the bodies they're attached to?

Or if you chop them ... does the rest of the body cease to exist?

Because the dead person they were attached to doesn't answer polls, nor own much of anything.

But I suppose a live person can also own a bunch of torsos. The statement however only pertained to legs.

And if some of this chopping happens. Is it more likely that the legs or body is destroyed? I would guess that more of the bodies are stored than the legs... But now if we extend to organs, heads and brains... How do we calculate those? Like do we need complete sets, or something less? Or is sufficient mass enough to count as one unit.

Yes, the legs come from people who had at most two but the people who own the body brokers now have those legs. For simplicity let's say person X is the sole owner of a body broker that sells cadavers to medical schools. If a school calls up X they may ask how many legs he has, and may give an answer like "I have 100 legs" (plus the approximately 2 legs X is likely not willing to sell).

That raises an interesting philosophical question, do you have to be alive to retain ownership?

I would say no, but in this case I think only "attached legs" should count.

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