Steve Smith wrote at 04/23/2013 05:45 PM: > I am just now skimming a book, _Shop Class as Soulcraft_ by Matthew B. > Crawford.
Added to my wish list! Thanks. https://www.powells.com/biblio/9780143117469 > I believe that some of the discontent being expressed on this list, > perhaps most acutely attributed to Doug, aka TrollBoi (grin), is > roughly predicated on the assumption that there is a whole lot of > *talking* going on and not (necessarily) a whole lot of *doing* Well, you also have to consider that this is a mailing list. If I still lived in Santa Fe, I'd meet with y'all on Fridays and I like to think there'd be more doing from my end. ... or maybe not. But on a mailing list, what else is there but talk? There can be _links_ to projects, and with other tools, there can even be collaboration. But it seems to me that anyone who subscribes to a mailing list shouldn't expect anything more than talk. Expecting something else would be akin to insanity, like expecting your hammer to get up and dance for you. > even (perhaps?) in the form of *careful* thought, which in my book is > a form of *doing*. That's a consideration. It seems to me that it's the _type_ of talk that irritates Doug, not that talk is the only thing that exists on a mailing list. But because Doug almost never participates in the discussion (other than to ridicule it), it's difficult to know what type of discussion he would prefer. Eric's foray into the relationship of the Higg's mechanism to the cosmological constant seemed well-tuned. It would be exciting to see Doug (or anyone else) launch into potential mechanisms for inflation or related to metaphysical hypotheses for what might go on outside our universe. Personally, I'd love to see people smarter than me discuss David Deutsch's multiverse. > I share Nick's hope (more a belief) that there is in fact a dialectic > ongoing within these frayed and tangled threads... Well, FWIW, I learn quite a bit from this list. To me, it's less about mind-changing and more about fleshing things out in a way not previously conceived. > Doug alluded to there being no shortage of *pontification* here, and > while I think I *do* feel that from time to time, here and there, what I > suppose I feel I hear more of is *speculation* which I happen to hold in > high esteem... I don't feel the need to classify interactions as "pontification" or "speculation" so much. I do _try_ to classify things, but mostly for whatever tiny audience I might have. If it were up to me, all classifications would come with a time/space/context caveat, because they're always false. As a result, pontification is not pontification. To invert the focus, if a classification I made remains stable for a long time or across many contexts, then I begin to worry that I'm stuck in some hobgoblin hyper-consistency rut. I've either stopped learning ... or perhaps I've become God. And if I were to bet on which is most likely, I'd take the former. ;-) > There are a number of topics of discussion here which do little to move > me. It is within the context of *those* discussions that I find myself > judging others' contribution as being possibly idle or worse, > vainglorious. I think the key to happiness is stated well by Nick's outburst: Nicholas Thompson wrote at 04/23/2013 12:52 PM: > Just do your thing. Don’t feel judged when other people do a > different thing, don’t feel slighted when other people don’t want to > do your thing, don’ t judge others for doing something you don’t > understand. Just do you damned thing. It’s really quite easy. One side issue, of course, is sheer volume. You can't read/hear/see everything. So, you have to filter. You can rely on others to filter for you, or you can filter yourself. For some reason, I'm comfortable filtering things for myself. I can hear speeches from Obama, Bush, or Ahmadinejad and decide for myself what to believe and what not to. I enjoy reading "false flag" nonsense from the nutjobs on the internet. But when I don't want to read it, it's easy to ignore. If you haven't developed these ignorance skills, then deluges of information (high or low signal-to-noise) can be difficult to deal with. My autistic nephew, in particular, has a very tough time choosing which information to pay attention to and which to ignore. For such people, tools like procmail, bayesian spam filters, and peer-reviewed journals are critical. There is a personality type, however, that won't willingly give in to such constraints. They _want_ to read/hear/see everything, even though they can't. When/if they miss a piece of information, they feel left out, anxious, or somehow inadequate. I think it's a type of obsessive compulsive disorder. One of my previous bosses was like this. He was so embarrassed when/if you pointed out an article or factoid that he wasn't aware of, he would either _lie_ and claim he knew about it or use some defense mechanism (like pretending he was late for something to cut the conversation short) to avoid the embarrassment he imposed upon himself. I don't know what to do with these people, except lead by example and freely, and often, admit my ignorance. [*] Did you Read it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7VgNQbZdaw Steve Smith wrote at 04/23/2013 05:45 PM: > I am not easily bored, but some > of the talk here (probably a near perfect complement to what bores Doug) > bores *me* to distraction. That's interesting. Nothing here bores me because, as soon as I recognize that I don't care about some thing, I mark the thread "read" and move on. (Oh, threaded e-mail readers are also a critical tool.) > Sadly these processes are messy. Many mistakes must be made. People > must make silly declarations which they might have to retract or modify > later. Others will have to snark at them to get them to notice. Unfortunately, snark doesn't work with me. I just view snarkiness as either laziness or arrogance. Also unfortunately, it can take a long time and a lot of work to bring me to a "teaching moment". That's an unfortunate consequence of my upbringing. My only solution is the golden rule. I try to treat others as I'd like others to treat me, which includes ignoring me when I bore them ... like now, I'm sure. [*] Of course, it's also useful to be on the lookout for the humility topos: http://thesecondpass.com/?p=6028 -- =><= glen e. p. ropella Sign my release from this planet's erosion ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
