ChristianKl's Shortform

ChristianKl

This is a special post for quick takes by ChristianKl. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.

It's my sense that most people have severely reduced mental facilities in the year before they die.

At the same time, the public knowledge suggests that all last ten popes had well working mental facilities before they die.

What's going on here? Does the church have a mechanism to "retire" popes that lose their mental facilities through unnatural death?

Is the church just very lucky?

Be VERY careful distinguishing different uses of "most" ("many", "very many", "almost all", "all except a few exceptions"), especially when applying to outliers on other unmeasured dimensions.

My expectation is that mental facilities aren't the most critical feature of popes, so they're typically selected such that even a reduction is still sufficient. And there's likely also active obfuscation of older popes' mental acuity, so it's not as obvious to the public.

I won't speculate on whether there are other measures taken to make sure that living... (read more)

ChristianKl's Shortform

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ChristianKl's Shortform

9