Re: Confessions of a CoBOL programmer

On Fri, 28 Mar 2008 18:32:16 +0000 (UTC), docdwarf@xxxxxxxxx () wrote:

(If it is true that Everyone Knows the population having (skill) is older
and Everyone Knows that older workers frequently command higher salaries
then Everyone Knows the population having (skill) may frequently command
higher salaries... on the other hand... the ability of those human-being
type folks to deny what seem to be logically valid conclusions has been
seen before... let me see... nigh a decade back, from
<http://groups.google.com/group/comp.software.year-2000/msg/da8c9f200ee62949?dmode=source>

I see your point, and I love your story that I started to quote below.
But I'm not sure that I get the same definitive lesson.

For instance, everybody raising their hand to accept the premises but
not the logical conclusion could be because they were wrong in
accepting the premises.

Or it could be that the definitions of "problems a community has" and
"problems that a company has" are related.

Of course, that might be your point.

--begin quoted text:

On what do I base my conclusion? Why... on A Story, of course...
apochryphal, perhaps, but Eminently Plausible:

A corporate seminar on drug-abuse in the workplace was being addressed by
a speaker. He began by asking 'How many of you think that drug abuse is a
problem in your community?'
.