Undecidable questions

Coulda, woulda, shoulda

"In writing about historical events never, ever say 'would have.' If you can't say 'did,' say 'might have.' 'Would have' masquerades a guess as a fact" (Gillespie, private correspondence, 21 December 2010).

Arguments drawn from intuitive ideas about what Earhart, Noonan, or other characters in this research would have done or should have done are moot: "In American law, a matter is moot if further legal proceedings with regard to it can have no effect, or events have placed it beyond the reach of the law. Thereby the matter has been deprived of practical significance or rendered purely academic."[1].

Ideas that are moot are indefinitely arguable, but undecidable (unless, of course, one has the power of reading the minds of the dead). In calling an argument "moot", one is not saying that it is known to be false but that the truth or falsity of the proposition is irrelevant to determining what, in fact, the character in question did think and do.