> Ah. But what if I hand you a map, and it shows two roads crossing. And you go to where those two roads cross and find that they don't cross? Then you look at the map, and it says "Never mind about those roads not crossing--believe that they cross, and keep going." And everytime you get to a point where two roads are supposed to cross and they don't, you read the little blurb and keep going. Then towards the end of your survey, you're doing things like "Well, see, it says these two roads here cross, and I can't actually see here where they do, but if the Earth was folded at this particular place twenty years ago, they WOULD have crossed, so huh, the map must be right!" to justify every little inconsistency, you're not exactly being logical or rational.
>
> And anyway, a *good* map wouldn't have roads crossing where they don't and vice-versa anyway.

The problem with this is that you are again making the assumption that the map shows roads that cross, but they really don't. I can't argue that it doesn't look that way, but I would like to put forward the idea that the map is often misread -- maybe one of the crossing roads is a buried power line, or perhaps one of the roads is a planned future road that hasn't been built yet. Without fully understanding the map, you would immediately assume that it was wrong when you find one of these apparent inconsistencies, but as you study the map more carefully, learning to read the legend better, and learn more about the history of the map, who drew it, and what they were trying to accomplish when they drew it (such as showing you roads that are being planned), then you start to realize that the map really isn't riddled with inconsistencies after all; it just looks that way to someone who doesn't know the details.

> -- Dave

Don "As someone who works with topographical maps in his daily work, I think that this analogy is stunningly good to work with" Monkey