Ian Smith writes:

On Wed, 10 Sep 2003, Simon Brooke wrote:
Consider a tug of war. Two teams heave on a rope, and the hankerchief
stays over the line, because each team is heaving equally hard. Now
suppose the North team go off and get a beer. Their end of the rope
goes slack, and the handkerchief moves. Is this because the North team
are doing more work? That is your argument.

Sorry, no. My argument is that the north team pulls less hard, and
teh handkerchief moves. Which team caused teh handkerchief to move?
You're saying the south team did, but they are doing nothing
different, so it's not sensible (by cause and effect) to say they
caused teh change.

The South team _do_ cause the change. That's simply an observable
fact, and no amount of distortion of reality can alter it. They are
still doing work, whereas the North team are driking beer. If the
South team had dropped the rope at the same time the North team did,
the handkerchief would not move.


--
(Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

'Victories are not solutions.'
;; John Hume, Northern Irish politician, on Radio Scotland 1/2/95
;; Nobel Peace Prize laureate 1998; few have deserved it so much