Quote:
Originally posted by JadziaDax
2. Everyone who has benefited from a scientific discovery owes money to some scientist or other.
3. If everyone has benefited from scientific discover or other, then some people haven't paid all of their bills.
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Statement 2 is false. Money is a specific economic function for transfer of debt. Scientific discovery has nothing to do with scientists being paid, since a beneficiary does not necessarily imply a debt - called the "free lunch principle." It happens all the time in real life. By extension, Statement 3 is trivially true, since any statement which takes a contradiction as an assumption can lead to any conclusion.