Quote:
Originally Posted by Perikles
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Prescriptivist nonsense!
Point 1 is generally true for formal registers and untrue for informal conversational registers. But even in formal registers there are exceptions:
We're not interested in the contract.
How about if we double the price? 
Point 2 is completely wrong. Conditions are never "whether", even if they begin with an infinitive. (Note that all of Perikles' examples of "if" in his last post are conditions: there's an implied "then").
If to love and lose is better than never to love at all, then ...