Determinism - a scientific or a philosophical position?

[Beth Paulkey]

Which one is it? If it is a scientific theory, what is the evidence that the universe is completely deterministic? If it's a philosophical theory (which would make it a metaphysical one I suppose), what are the arguments for it?

Does any physicist today hold a strict deterministic theory?

Thank you.

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Beth,

Quote:

Which one is it? If it is a scientific theory, what is the evidence that the universe is completely deterministic? If it's a philosophical theory (which would make it a metaphysical one I suppose), what are the arguments for it?

Does any physicist today hold a strict deterministic theory?

That depends on what you mean by "deterministic". If you are using the mathematical definition of the term, then it is metaphysical, because no observation can distinguish between acausal determinism and non-determinism*.

Most people simply mean causality when they talk about determinism, though. Under that definition, it is a falsifiable theory, and thus scientific. Unfortunately, it has been falsified.

The Universe is not temporally causal, which is to say that there are events which are not, and cannot, be caused by the conditions prior to the event.

As for mathematical determinism as a metaphysical position, there are no logical arguments for it, or against it. So long as there is no evidence, it is blind speculation, and there is no logical reason to think it is one way or the other.

*Such a distinction is not possible according to our current understanding of the laws of physics. It is possible, at least in principle, that this could change. Future scientific theories might provide for some way to test whether the Universe is mathematically deterministic or not.

Dr. Stupid

[Soubrette]

Stimpy

Could you give me an example of an event that cannot be caused by the conditions prior to the event?

Thanks

Sou

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Sou,

Quote:

Could you give me an example of an event that cannot be caused by the conditions prior to the event?

Sure, the decay of a neutron into a proton.

It has been empirically verified that quantum event (like nuclear decay) cannot be described in terms of deterministic local variables. This means that either they are random, or they can be described in terms of non-local deterministic variables.

If the latter is the case, then they cannot be caused by prior conditions. If they are caused by anything at all, there will be inertial frames in which the effect precedes the cause (due to special relativity).

Dr. Stupid

[Soubrette]

Thanks Stimpy

And apologies for lowering the tone of this thread but what's the difference between a local determinic variable and a non-local one?

Sou

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Sou,

Quote:

And apologies for lowering the tone of this thread but what's the difference between a local determinic variable and a non-local one?

Local is defined in terms of special relativity. A local variables scenario is one in which all observable phenomena are functions of some set of underlying deterministic quantities which obey special relativity. That means that an event at point A can only affect something at point B after a period of time has elapsed, equal to the time required for light to travel that distance.

In different inertial frames, distances and elapsed time periods change. But even so, if the system is "local" in one inertial frame, it will be local in all inertial frames. Under such a scenario, special relativity is obeyed, and causality makes sense.

In a non-local scenario, an event at point A can affect something at point B before that minimal time has elapsed. This means that in some inertial frames, an event at A could actually affect something at point B before it even happened. In other words, causality goes out the window.

Incidentally, this is also why faster than light travel would make travel backwards in time possible.

Dr. Stupid

[hammegk]

Quote:

Originally posted by Stimpson J. Cat

Sou:

Could you give me an example of an event that cannot be caused by the conditions prior to the event?


Sure, the decay of a neutron into a proton.

It has been empirically verified that quantum event (like nuclear decay) cannot be described in terms of deterministic local variables.

Although we might also add "according to current understanding & theory". Of course science may eventually better describe the TOE (what-is) that is Truth and if so, who knows. Tachyons, gravitons, what the heck!

Re non-locality

Quote:

If they are caused by anything at all, there will be inertial frames in which the effect precedes the cause (due to special relativity).

At least the science will still be ok since the correlation will still be there....

[Stimpson J. Cat]

hammegk,

Quote:

It has been empirically verified that quantum event (like nuclear decay) cannot be described in terms of deterministic local variables.
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Although we might also add "according to current understanding & theory". Of course science may eventually better describe the TOE (what-is) that is Truth and if so, who knows. Tachyons, gravitons, what the heck!

No. I have no doubt that our scientific theories will continue to change over time, but any new theories must still be consistent with what we have already observed. Special Relativity isn't just a theory, it is an observed phenomena. Non-locality [i]implies[/b] acausality. It is that simple.

Quote:

If they are caused by anything at all, there will be inertial frames in which the effect precedes the cause (due to special relativity).
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At least the science will still be ok since the correlation will still be there....

What correlation? The lack of correlations is exactly why we do not assume that there is a deterministic process at work, non-local or otherwise.

Dr. Stupid

[Jeff Corey]

At the micro level, as I understand that quantum effects are possibly indeterminant, at least so far. But at the macro level, causality, and hence, determinism, has had robust confirmation. The only quibbling about that has dealt with human behavior. Free willy, and all that.
So, without further adieu, how about it agin?
Is our behaviour determined or could I have spelt behavior correctly?

[hammegk]

Quote:

Originally posted by Stimpson J. Cat


What correlation? The lack of correlations is exactly why we do not assume that there is a deterministic process at work, non-local or otherwise.

Well, I thought it was funny. Past-future, cause-effect, which comes first, reference frames, and yet, viola! Correlation!.

[neutrino_cannon]

Quote:

Originally posted by Jeff Corey
At the micro level, as I understand that quantum effects are possibly indeterminant, at least so far. But at the macro level, causality, and hence, determinism, has had robust confirmation. The only quibbling about that has dealt with human behavior. Free willy, and all that.
So, without further adieu, how about it agin?
Is our behaviour determined or could I have spelt behavior correctly?

This would be my understanding as well, and it would seem to me that the only reason anybody would care would be because of philisophical positions.

Why would causality seem to rule at marco levels which would seem to be ruled by the level lower down? Because of probability, and the enourmous amount of interactions at the basal level of reality, whatever that might be.

And how could you tell an extremly complex system from a totaly random (or somewhat random one) if you didn't know exactly how it worked? I see no way to ascertain whether the universe is at heart random or ordered, and since there is not enough evidence either way (at the universe's basal level), it would seem a position either way is philisophical rather than scientific.

[Tez]

Quote:

Originally posted by Jeff Corey
At the micro level, as I understand that quantum effects are possibly indeterminant, at least so far. But at the macro level, causality, and hence, determinism, has had robust confirmation. The only quibbling about that has dealt with human behavior. Free willy, and all that.
So, without further adieu, how about it agin?
Is our behaviour determined or could I have spelt behavior correctly?

Well Jeff, to quibble with your quibble, I disagree that at the macro level (local) causality has had robust confirmation. For a start, one can only claim that it has had confirmation only over time periods short enough and measurements coarse grained enough that the nonlinear (chaos theory) amplification of our (quantum theory) indeterminedness becomes irrelevant. Secondly, how big is macro? Does a superconducting current in a SQUID which is several millimetres (fractions of an inch ) count as micro??

Basically we can only say that determinism works as an approximation under certain physical conditions we understand reasonably well. This is hardly going to allow us to probe very deeply into the problem...

[hammegk]

Quote:

Originally posted by Tez


..... I disagree that at the macro level (local) causality has had robust confirmation. For a start, one can only claim that it has had confirmation only over time periods short enough and measurements coarse grained enough that the nonlinear (chaos theory) amplification of our (quantum theory) indeterminedness becomes relevant.

Shouldn't that be "irrelevant"?

Quote:

Secondly, how big is macro? Does a superconducting current in a SQUID which is several millimetres (fractions of an inch ) count as micro??

Isn't superconductivity "deterministic", in that set the conditions correctly and, yup, it superconducts? (BTW, a small fraction of a millimeter sounds plenty macro to me.)

[Tez]

Quote:

Originally posted by hammegk

Shouldn't that be "irrelevant"?

yep - thanks.

Quote:

[B}
Isn't superconductivity "deterministic", in that set the conditions correctly and, yup, it superconducts? (BTW, a small fraction of a millimeter sounds plenty macro to me.) [/b]

Well squids are the superconducting equivalent of the two-slit interferometer which is usually used as a paradigm example of quantum indeterminism. But of course thats only true if you do the single particle versions, so in fact youre right. I guess one has to do an experiment where the squid current is measured in such a way that it causes a non-deterministic collapse, which at the moment I cant really see how to do as something thats convincingly "macroscopic". So I'll concede that point...

[sorgoth]

Wait wait............................

Effect before Cause? ...Explain, please.

[Dymanic]

I'm going to challenge the central premise of the OP, and offer this quote by Daniel Dennett (the philosopher):

Scientists sometimes decieve themselves into thinking
that philosophical ideas are only, at best, decorations
or parasitic commentaries on the hard, objective
triumphs of science, and that they themselves are
immune to the confusions that philosophers devote their
lives to dissolving. But there is no such thing as
philosophy-free science; there is only science whose
philosophical baggage is taken on board without
examination.

Determinism (and its opposite) is pure philosophy.


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The Universe is not temporally causal, which is to say that there are events which are not, and cannot, be caused by the conditions prior to the event.
----


List 17 such events.

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Whodini,

Quote:

The Universe is not temporally causal, which is to say that there are events which are not, and cannot, be caused by the conditions prior to the event.
----

List 17 such events.

Is that supposed to be a joke?

Dr. Stupid

Quote:

Originally posted by Beth Paulkey
Which one is it? If it is a scientific theory, what is the evidence that the universe is completely deterministic? If it's a philosophical theory (which would make it a metaphysical one I suppose), what are the arguments for it?

Does any physicist today hold a strict deterministic theory?

Thank you.

No physicists are determinists. But that's not important or interesting. The real question you should be asking is whether the idea that all change in the world can be described by physical laws is a scientific or philosophical one. If all change in the world can be described by physical laws, then that contradicts libertarian free will as all our behaviour follows physical laws and we do not have the freedom to break out of such physical laws.

Obviously the question of whether all change in the world can be described by physical laws is a philosophical one.

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Ian,

Quote:

Obviously the question of whether all change in the world can be described by physical laws is a philosophical one.

How so? If there is anything in the world that cannot be described by physical laws, then all you would have to do to falsify the hypothesis that all change in the world can be described by physical laws, would be to observe such a thing.

That means that the hypothesis that all change in the world can be described by physical laws, is a falsifiable hypothesis. That makes it a scientific question.

Of course, you could always argue that there are some non-observable things that exist, but which cannot be described by physical laws, but this is irrelevant. I could say the same about any scientific theory. You can always postulate that a hypothesis is false, but in such a way that it could never be demonstrated to be false. So what?

Dr. Stupid

Quote:

Originally posted by Stimpson J. Cat
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Obviously the question of whether all change in the world can be described by physical laws is a philosophical one.
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How so? If there is anything in the world that cannot be described by physical laws, then all you would have to do to falsify the hypothesis that all change in the world can be described by physical laws, would be to observe such a thing.

No you need to verify the hypothesis. Since this will be extremely difficult to do it is consequently a philosophical issue.

[Soapy Sam]

Stimpy- what follows is ignorant speculation at best and may be simple meaningless wordplay, but I would welcome comment from those who seem to have a firmer grasp of theory.
If in addition to the 3 known spatial dimensions and the one temporal one, (chronic one??), it turns out that there "really" are another handful of dimensions; if one of those scrunched up dimensions has a temporal component; then (it seems to me) that there may be more than one kind of "before" and "after" - just as there are more than two ways to approach a point in space.

Could Einstein's "hidden variables" lurk in such a dimension, generating deterministic causality in quantum events which appear from our viewpoint to be temporally acausal?

What do you think?

I repeat , I am playing with words here. I would not begin to know how to express the question mathematically. I see nothing inconsistent in the grammar of the question, but I accept that says nothing about the physics.

nb. As these extra dimensions are physically tiny, perhaps only quantum scale events can "occur" therein?

Quote:

Originally posted by Stimpson J. Cat
Whodini,
Is that supposed to be a joke?
Dr. Stupid

Well you mentioned one event. Are there others?

[Underemployed]

It is amazing that we can observe an event - a neutron decaying into a proton, say - and triumphantly conclude that since we don't know why it did it, it must be random. Or something else.

Obviously there is a reason why the neutron decayed at that precise moment. Ignoring the problem won't make it go away. Pedantic metaphysical arguments will not tell us why - but on the other hand, vastly expensive research projects haven't got very far, either...

Quote:

Originally posted by Underemployed
It is amazing that we can observe an event - a neutron decaying into a proton, say - and triumphantly conclude that since we don't know why it did it, it must be random. Or something else.

Obviously there is a reason why the neutron decayed at that precise moment.

Why?

[Soapy Sam]

This is where we move back into epistemiology / philosophy. What is the difference between reason and cause. Does an event have to have an ultimate cause.
Ultimately the reason something happens is because the universe said that it must. The question is why and how does it do that?

[hammegk]

Quote:

Originally posted by Interesting Ian


Why?

Science doesn't currently provide the answer, but do you wish to argue the decay to be "random"?

Well, the two possible answers are "random" or "non-local hiden variables." Take your pick.

[hammegk]

I vaguely recall some research that implied the act of "beginning to observe" a specific radioactive atom in effect resets the half-life clock for that atom.

Stop observing, start again, and each time half-life is then measureable from the new t-zero. Has this been debunked?

What did you say a "hidden variable" might be? And as Soapy asked, is something in Dim 10 local, or non-local?

"Non-local" in that it's outside of the event's past light cone.

And I've never head of this "resetting the half-life clock" idea. So I can't comment on it.

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Ian,

Quote:

How so? If there is anything in the world that cannot be described by physical laws, then all you would have to do to falsify the hypothesis that all change in the world can be described by physical laws, would be to observe such a thing.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

No you need to verify the hypothesis. Since this will be extremely difficult to do it is consequently a philosophical issue.

Only falsifiable theories can be verified. They are verified by attempting, and failing, to falsify them. The difficulty of such verification is irrelevant. As long as it is, at least in principle, falsifiable, it is a scientific issue.


Soapy Sam,

Quote:

Stimpy- what follows is ignorant speculation at best and may be simple meaningless wordplay, but I would welcome comment from those who seem to have a firmer grasp of theory.
If in addition to the 3 known spatial dimensions and the one temporal one, (chronic one??), it turns out that there "really" are another handful of dimensions; if one of those scrunched up dimensions has a temporal component; then (it seems to me) that there may be more than one kind of "before" and "after" - just as there are more than two ways to approach a point in space.

Three points.

1) These "extra dimensions" are posited by string theory, as well as by some other theories that attempt to unify QM with GR. They have not yet been demonstrated to exist.

2) A dimension does not have a "temporal component". A dimension is either "spacelike", or "timelike", depending on its geometry.

3) The conception of "spacelike" and "timelike" dimensions is a classical one, specifically deriving from the formalism of General Relativity. At the Plank scale, this formalism is not applicable. The "extra dimensions" that are posited by string theory are assumed to be scrunched down to that scale. It is therefore simply not meaningful to talk about them being "spacelike" or "timelike".

Quote:

Could Einstein's "hidden variables" lurk in such a dimension, generating deterministic causality in quantum events which appear from our viewpoint to be temporally acausal?

What do you think?

I don't see how. Even if we were to imagine a second "temporal dimension", the very existence of such a dimension would render temporal causality meaningless.

Einstein posited the existence of local deterministic hidden variables. That hypothesis has been falsified. I do not think that Einstein would have been any happier with hidden variables that violate causality (nonlocal ones) than with nondeterminism. Unfortunately, I have no way of asking him.


Whodini,

Quote:

Whodini,
Is that supposed to be a joke?
Dr. Stupid
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well you mentioned one event. Are there others?

I mentioned an entire class of events.

Quote:

It has been empirically verified that quantum event (like nuclear decay) cannot be described in terms of deterministic local variables. This means that either they are random, or they can be described in terms of non-local deterministic variables.

In fact, this class makes up all the events in the physical World. Causality is an emergent phenomena. At the fundamental level, none of the original quantum events that make up macroscopic (causal) events, are causal.


Underemployed,

Quote:

It is amazing that we can observe an event - a neutron decaying into a proton, say - and triumphantly conclude that since we don't know why it did it, it must be random. Or something else.

We don't. We just don't conclude that it wasn't random either. We don't know. But until such time as a deterministic explanation is found, our description of the event must be made in terms of randomness.

Quote:

Obviously there is a reason why the neutron decayed at that precise moment. Ignoring the problem won't make it go away. Pedantic metaphysical arguments will not tell us why - but on the other hand, vastly expensive research projects haven't got very far, either...

Is it really obvious? If so, then it should be possible to logically prove that there must be a reason. If you (or anyone else) could do this, I am sure it would be worth a Nobel Prize. But it isn't really obvious. It may be intuitively obvious, but intuition is unreliable. All sorts of intuitively obvious things have been demonstrated to be wrong.


hammegk,

Quote:

I vaguely recall some research that implied the act of "beginning to observe" a specific radioactive atom in effect resets the half-life clock for that atom.

Stop observing, start again, and each time half-life is then measureable from the new t-zero. Has this been debunked?

This is nothing specific to QM. It is a property of Poisson distributions. Look at it this way. Imagine time is discrete. In such a unit of time, a decay has a probability 'p' of happening. This will result in a "half life". Furthermore, it is clear that the average time you will have to wait for the decay to happen will be the same, no matter when you start waiting for it.

Nothing is being "reset". That idea stems from the preconceived notion that the decay is somehow "predetermined".

Dr. Stupid

[Q-Source]

Stimpson,

Quote:

Originally posted by Stimpson J. Cat

The Universe is not temporally causal, which is to say that there are events which are not, and cannot, be caused by the conditions prior to the event.

Is this a fact or it is speculation?

Quote:

At the fundamental level, none of the original quantum events that make up macroscopic (causal) events, are causal.

None are causal?

I know that you have explained this before, but I cannot find the thread where you talked about. So, my very specific question is this: are there events intrinsically random such that even if you are God (you have all the info) you cannot determine the behaviour of such event?.

Thanks

Q-S

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Q-Source,

Quote:

The Universe is not temporally causal, which is to say that there are events which are not, and cannot, be caused by the conditions prior to the event.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Is this a fact or it is speculation?

It has been empirically verified.

Quote:

At the fundamental level, none of the original quantum events that make up macroscopic (causal) events, are causal.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

None are causal?

I know that you have explained this before, but I cannot find the thread where you talked about. So, my very specific question is this: are there events intrinsically random such that even if you are God (you have all the info) you cannot determine the behaviour of such event?.

That is determinism, not causality. Causality is a specific type of determinism. Specifically, a deterministic system is causal if its state at any time is completely determined by prior states.

General determinism is not falsifiable, because you can always invent additional "hidden" variables that account for any observed phenomenon.

It is somewhat analogous to a problem is chaos theory. If you have a finite time series, it is not possible to determine whether it was generated by a random process, or by a deterministic chaotic process of sufficient complexity. The more data you have, the more complex the system the data was taken from would have to be, in order for the data to be indistinguishable from a random process, but for any finite data set, the required complexity is also finite.

Dr. Stupid

Quote:

Originally posted by Stimpson J. Cat

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How so? If there is anything in the world that cannot be described by physical laws, then all you would have to do to falsify the hypothesis that all change in the world can be described by physical laws, would be to observe such a thing.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

No you need to verify the hypothesis. Since this will be extremely difficult to do it is consequently a philosophical issue.
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Only falsifiable theories can be verified.

They cannot be verified. The reason why the falsifiability criteria was introduced in the first place was due to the recognition that scientific theories cannot be verified but only ever falsified (although arguably scientific theories cannot be falsified either).

Besides your argument is viciously circular. What you are effectively doing is presupposing that "determinism" (in its appropriately modified sense) is true, and challenging people to prove it is not true by falsifying it.

Now note that I am not saying there is anything wrong with presupposing it is true. It is a basic presupposition of science. But that's all it is, a presupposition. The thesis itself, being a presupposition of science, is metaphysical by definition. Hence it is a philosophical issue.

Quote:

They are verified by attempting, and failing, to falsify them.

No, failure to falsify doesn't mean the same thing as verify. You misunderstand the nature of science in any case. All scientific theories in the past ever proposed have eventually been falsified. Thus by induction it might be reasonable to suppose that all our present and future theories will eventually be falsified. In other words none of our scientific theories depict reality as it really is. Thus if "determinism" is a scientific theory then if follows that "determinism" is false. Are you sure you want to go down this path?

[Beth Paulkey]

Such an outpouring of responses. Thank you all.
I would like to expand on my original questions but stay relatively concrete - let me know if I go too far astray. I'm mostly interested in the idea of determinism at the macro level I guess you'd say - rather than the quantum.

It doesn't appear that we can know the exact dimensions of everyday objects like vegetables and building materials (weighs exactly .5 kilograms, is exactly 10 cm long), one reason why cooking fails and buildings fall down. All you can do is specify your requirements within some tolerances - try a box of finishing nails from some manufacturer and look at the small variations. Maybe at the nano-machine level you can get super-thin circuits and know that they're exactly 15 atoms wide, but you can't build a house from those components yet.

Or, take the sun, which has like 99.9% of the mass of the solar system. If you can't predict the exact behavior of the sun from instant to instant, how can you hope to have a deterministic earth? (sorry, that probably gets into Quantum theory - I'm rambling).

You have an event - say a bowler rolls a strike. Can you ever hope to enumerate all the causes of that particular strike? If determinism is correct, wouldn't everything in the bowler's universe (that light-cone thing) contribute to the final outcome? And once the ball has hit the pins, all that information - the effects - is now part of the universe.

So, no event can be repeated exactly enough for anyone to say "the same causes always produce exactly the same effects" because the same causes never happen. The causes are always different.

If you say "given all the knowledge of the conditions I can predict the results correctly every time", you can explain your failures by saying "the conditions were different this time". But you don't know that until afterward.

If that's the case, I don't see how macro-determinism can ever be proven or disproven, nor how it can be effectively applied to understand our world.

I believe that laboratory experiments just control as closely as possible their conditions, so that they can be repeated or varied at the will of the experimenter, but that no one claims to be able to set up the same experiment exactly the same way every time.

Please help me pick this apart - I know it's not terribly coherent.

Quote:

Originally posted by Q-Source
Stimpson,



Is this a fact or it is speculation?



None are causal?

I know that you have explained this before, but I cannot find the thread where you talked about. So, my very specific question is this: are there events intrinsically random such that even if you are God (you have all the info) you cannot determine the behaviour of such event?.

Thanks

Q-S

He argues about causality and acausality in this thread here Don't know if your question is addressed there. Interesting in that thread he claims that "Technically speaking, nothing is truly causal". That claim is reproduced in The One called Neo's sig

Just spotted your response to Q Source. Now I said:

Quote:

II
Besides your argument is viciously circular. What you are effectively doing is presupposing that "determinism" (in its appropriately modified sense) is true, and challenging people to prove it is not true by falsifying it.

But in your response to Q Source you said:

Quote:

Stimpy

General determinism is not falsifiable, because you can always invent additional "hidden" variables that account for any observed phenomenon.

Exactly! Straight out of the horse's mouth! Er . . .if that's the right expression! Yet another reason to challenge the idea that the thesis of "determinism" can be supposed to be a scientific one.

[Beth Paulkey]

Quote:

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
Interesting in that thread he claims that "Technically speaking, nothing is truly causal".

[sarcasm]I keep waiting to hear about the discovery of that elusive fifth force, the one called "causation" - I used to think it would be something like gravity or electromagnetism, but I'm more and more inclined to believe it's just a catch-all for "it looks to me like A had something to do with the later occurrence of B".

What would we call the quantum of causation? The "becausatron"?[/sarcasm]

Edited for the codes.... the codes (homage to Dr. X)

Quote:

Originally posted by Beth Paulkey

I keep waiting to hear about the discovery of that elusive fifth force, the one called "causation" - I used to think it would be something like gravity or electromagnetism, but I'm more and more inclined to believe it's just a catch-all for "it looks to me like A had something to do with the later occurrence of B".

What would we call the quantum of causation? The "becausatron"?

Gee, and I was sooooo convinced that you just started this thread to ask a question and get answers. And now, if I didn't know better, I'd swear you just wanted to rail against science.

Let's agree with this preposterous crap for a second. A wields a gun, pulls the trigger, a bullet flies and strikes B. A wound suddenly appears in B, shortly followed by blood flowing, B falling down and ceasing to breathe.

Causation?

Different A and B. B is now a female. B starts feeling frisky and jumps A's bones. B begins to swell over the next several months. Nine months after B is feeling frisky, C pops out.

Causation?

No, my friends, no. The magical cosmic muffin did it! There is no truth! No reality! It is all a muffin-driven illusion. To your talismans! Ho! Throw off your clothes, paint your bodies and worship the muffin.

Don't forget to add some butter.

Oh, wait, that can't make it taste better, can it? After all, there isn't any causation.

Cheers,

[Beth Paulkey]

Sorry Bill - I neglected to insert the sarcasm-on and sarcasm-off indicator in that last couple of sentences.

That better?

Next time I will be sure to rail in a more unambiguous fashion.

Cheers back.