Yesterday I reported that, guilt stricken, I had contacted the mairie of the 5th arrondissement to arrange for the pickup of my deceased dishwasher. This morning, at ten of six, as I set out on my morning walk, I saw that it had indeed been taken away. "Well," I said to myself, "there you have it. Do the right thing and the world cooperates. Very nice." Later on, as Susie and I set out for the market, we stopped in to tell the nice lady in the hotel next door about my success in arranging this bit of civic proper behavior. She laughed and told us that yesterday in late afternoon a little man came by, eyeballed the dishwasher, went away, returned with a dolly, and carted the dishwasher away.
As I learned many years ago during my undergraduate days, post hoc, ergo propter hoc is not a reliable rule of inference.
