Re: Sticking point

Dale,

"DE" == Dale Emery wrote:

 DE> Sometimes "we can't do that" means one of those things.  I like to
 DE> take it at face value, at least at first.  My trouble is that it can
 DE> mean one of (at least) two things:  "something prevents us from X" or
 DE> "we expect something bad to happen if we do X, so we choose not to do
 DE> X."  And I often can't tell from the context which meaning the speaker
 DE> intends.

 DE> So I try to find out which meaning.  

Well, but that _is_ asking "why you *won't* do that?".  In your later
example, the moment of choice is explicit.  In the former one it's implicit
and it would be usefull to make in explicit.  I've not met a single case
when such statement was like "the laws of physics prevent us from X".  Most
frequent the 'something' is a belief or fear or both.

-- 
Andrey V Khavryuchenko            http://www.kds.com.ua/
Silver Bullet Software Solutions  http://www.kds.com.ua/edu/

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