[Avodah] HARav Asher Weiss - Metzora 5772: 'Kashrus Verification'

Rich, Joel JRich at sibson.com
Tue May 8 11:57:05 PDT 2012


Then discussion of one of my favorite topics - Chazal and statistics. R'AW says out loud what I've whispered to my chaburah - Chazal did not engage in statistics! First he discusses why a miyut shachiach (normally found minority?) is of concern (why not just say rov [majority] is sufficient?) - Perhaps because of concern for margin of error. Then on to miyut hamatzui (material minority) and the famous 10% rule of the Mishkinot Yaakov - he feels tshuva is misread; while it does mention 10% with some "interesting" proofs, the conclusion is that it's just about what's "common" - and the real problem is defining "common" in age where a shocheit may shecht 100X as many animals in the old days. That's why we steer clear of doubt!!!!! Oy, if only they would ask an actuary?
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Hmm, who wrote that?  Anyway it does make me think: Given that now behavioral economists understand we have an availability heuristic (we predict frequency of events based on how easy it is to think of an example - and thus can overstate risks) and examples of everything are more commonly known (given technology changes/social networking), is it possible we need to redefine miyut hamatzui if R'AW is correct that it is a measure of what people think is common?
KT
Joel Rich
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