Re: "no one talks .... specifics"

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Re: "no one talks .... specifics"

Nick Thompson
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
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Re: "no one talks .... specifics"

Steve Smith
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