Lyle, don't insult me in public with lies in this way. I will not
permit this. If you think the question of math people snooting it
over humanities people is private business between you and me and
not an extremely common and general phenomenon on the list, well,
you're wrong. And if you think that I should limit my comments
about public affairs only to those things that I have *not* recently
discussed in private with you, then you drastically overestimate
your importance to my life. Believe it or not, Lyle, you are not
the center of the universe.
You are also incorrect in that my comments have nothing to do with
"the point about causality". I thought my answer was straightforward
and direct. Just because you minored in classics doesn't necessarily
mean that you understand rhetoric. If you don't think that words
(and setting an example) have a physical, causal effect on human
brains, and if you don't think that it is human brains (all six
billion of them) that run the world, I don't know what else to tell
you.
You are the one who brought private business onto the list, in the
paragraph I've quoted above. I'd like an apology. Knowing you, I
don't expect to get one, but I always enjoy pleasant surprises.
-- Eric Watt Forste ++ arkuat@pobox.com ++ http://www.pobox.com/~arkuat/