Marie can say that each day we are at a new pinnacle
because she is comparing the present with the past --
there's no problem with breaking a record every day,
or even every instant, in principle. Eric has a
problem with that because he's not looking only at
the past, but also the future. How can you say
something is an all-time great, when the future is
by definition unknowable? Marie and Eric are both
right.
This misunderstanding is very, very typical of those
that occur over and over again, around here, and lots
of other places too. Marie is trying with honesty
to say how things look from where she is, while Eric
is trying to understand, and then communicate, how
things really are. Thus the more objectivist (note
the case of the initial!) stance of taking the future
into account. Marie, I think, is less interested in
how things *really* are, and more interested in how
people see things -- where people seeing things the
same way is a bonus, of course!
Ultimately, how things really are, and how people see
things, are both important -- I'd go so far as to say,
they're equally important. We need to look at both,
and we'll avoid a lot of unnecessary hassle if we're
clear about which we're focussing on at any given time,
because though they're equally important, they're not
entirely interchangable.
I hope not to become a boring proselytiser, but I'll
take the risk of mentioning that I go into stuff like
this, to some extent, if anyone's interested, on
http://www.faichney.org/synthesis/ (and I'll be going
into it to a much greater extent in the coming months).
(Work on the website is one of the reasons I haven't
found the time to keep up with all the discussion
going on here just now.)
-- Robin