I posted a reply yesterday to aviodornovato pointing out that:
* he misunderstands the legal concept of guilt, which contrary to what he says is not a "legal consequence of causality", and
* if he wants to reduce causality to correlation (Hume's "constant conjunction") then he is going to have trouble explaining the causality in aircraft accidents. To have correlation, you need many similar events with similar conjunctions. Aircraft accidents are by and large unique, so it is all but impossible to establish correlation. That is why accident investigation agencies and people like ourselves use the Counterfactual Test.
I would still like to know what happened to my original note.
BTW, I think BOAC's view on learning from the accident is hopelessly narrow. I know no means of selecting the causal factors "important to pilots" from amongst the causal factors of an accident, until you actually have all of the causal factors and understand their causal relations. He seems to want to pick and choose in advance of having a full explanation, which I don't think can be done reliably.
I also notice that no one is bothering to answer the questions I posed with my simple example. Anyone who thinks they can prioritise causes should be able to do so easily with this simple example, as well as explain their reasons for doing so.
PBL