Re: Friam Digest, Vol 63, Issue 6

[Nick Thompson]

I TOTALLY MISSED the fight club thing.

[sigh]

Sorry, Robert. MY bad.  

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University ([hidden email])

>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 05 Sep 2008 22:08:01 -0600
> From: Steve Smith <[hidden email]>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "no one talks .... specifics"
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> <[hidden email]>
> Message-ID: <[hidden email]>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> Nick -
>
> But you can't argue with the multifaceted literary/cinematic allusion to
> Fight Club which is sooo apropos on so many levels!
>
> When _Choke_ comes out in cinematic form, that will add a whole other
> suite of potential references!
>
> I do however, like your reference to self-fulfilling irony, and I do
> appreciate your description of the lists occasional "incandescence"
> which for me, at least, evokes the wonderful sense of equal and abundant
> measures of heat *and* light!
>
> - Steve
>     (closet Chuck Palahnuik fan)
> > Robert Holmes wrote
> >
> > ==>"First rule of FRIAM: no one talks about specifics"<===
> >
> >
> > Nick Thompson replies:
> >
> > BAD Robert; BAD, BAD, BAAAAAD!
> >
> > "Bad" because untrue.  Sometimes the list gets mindnumbingly specific,

say,
> > about specific softwares and what you use them for.
> >
> > And Bad because we were talking to a Newbie at the time and your irony
> > might in fact be taken for a friam proscription.    It's called,
> > "self-fullfilling irony."
> >
> > For me, the list is most exciting when there is tension between the
> > specific and the general, when, for instance, we talk about Rosen, but
do
> > so with a specific passge or text in mind, or talk about relativity,
with a
> > specific phenomenon or formulation in mind,  or, at the other extreme,
> > talk about a specific software development or scientific observation
> > because it raises some general issue or paradox.  When we achieve that
> > tension, we are ..... incandescent!  I would urge all of us, when we are
> > discussing generalities, to provide examples from texts or from nature,
and

> > when when we are talking about specifics, to provide the principles or
> > issues to which they are relevant.  
> >
> > That's my two cents.  
> >
> > Nick
> >  
> >
> >
> > ============================================================
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
> >  
>
>
>
> ***

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org