On Thu, 21 Feb 2008, Ben Caplan wrote: > We have here a moral, not a factual, decision. Either choice makes sense; > which one is _right_?
The general practice is that if two decisions are equally, or close to similarly "reasonable", then we defer to the judge's call. That is, a hypothetical Appeals judge, and the players in general, should say "Even though Yes is equally reasonable, it was the Judge's turn to make a call, so we'll go along with No." The reason for this practice is, in part, that this is a game and (unlike real courts) we are often judging fairly abstract "what-ifs" (rather than always dealing with criminal/civil matters), and this gives everyone a "fair turn" to influence play. Of course, the question then comes is when to go beyond that and overrule. If the other argument is 1% more reasonable? (probably not). 5%? 10%? Etc. In this case, I agree with you, both sides are fairly reasonable and "make sense", hopefully the final judgement taking into account Zefram's latest comments (and yours, and others) will help it sway, but in the end you might be right, it's just (literally) a judgement call on my part. -Goethe
