THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically"

[Nick Thompson]

Dear everybody,

 

On several occasions, this one included, I have gotten involved in email exchanges on FRIAM and elsewhere that were so good that I wanted to save them in chronological order and perhaps edit them into some kind of text for the authors to present elsewhere.  Two years ago I spent an entire May trying to write a macro that would do this, but it ultimately defeated me. 

 

Has anybody else thought about this problem.  I think lots of good thought gets spilt into email and never sees the light of day. 

 

Thanks for your thoughts.

 

Nick

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2016 9:11 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Memo To Jeff Bezos: The Most Productive Workers Are Team Players, Not Selfish Individualists | The Evolution Institute

 

The whole is occasionally greater than the sum of the parts.    At least as often is some crazy like Gerald bailing water to keep the ship afloat while the rest of the people are up on the dining deck admiring each other and their martinis.  

---

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Owen Densmore <[hidden email]>
Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2016 9:05:48 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Memo To Jeff Bezos: The Most Productive Workers Are Team Players, Not Selfish Individualists | The Evolution Institute

 

Synergy. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Reeds law. Yup.

 

On Wed, Oct 26, 2016 at 8:59 PM, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

I'll say yes and no:  Yes, a group of people that understand that each is distinct will bother to model one another and politely negotiate over things.    That is not a one entity (a team) doing something, it is an N-to-N activity of many entities.  But no, it is foolish to think that the N entities all have the same values or the same degree of investment, and it is foolish in any competitive environment to push people toward the mean.    There's a tendency for those with less investment (or even lower productivity) to want to create norms for those having more.    Conversely, the principals need to understand that not everyone wants to sustain 80 hour work weeks.

---

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Gillian Densmore <[hidden email]>
Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2016 8:35:23 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Memo To Jeff Bezos: The Most Productive Workers Are Team Players, Not Selfish Individualists | The Evolution Institute

 

*Smack my head* we needed a long study to show what  kids, parents, the swashbucklers and Nords already new? Comradery and being nice meens a sold and fun place to be at?

lol sigh.

 

 

On Wed, Oct 26, 2016 at 8:24 PM, Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:

Slightly relevant, I think:

http://qz.com/625870/after-years-of-intensive-analysis-google-discovers-the-key-to-good-teamwork-is-being-nice/?utm_source=kwfb&kwp_0=256037

Frank Wimberly
Phone <a href="tel:%28505%29%20670-9918" target="_blank">[phone]

 

On Oct 26, 2016 7:33 PM, "Marcus Daniels" <[hidden email]> wrote:

Steve,

 

I think it is a false dichotomy.    A healthy collective improves the lives of its members, not just a few of them.   A large collective (like our nation) will have a larger set of objectives to optimize at once.   A liberal, like me, will argue for throwing the collective resources at those harder problems.

A Libertarian will essentially argue for treating the system as a set of smaller systems and limiting the complexity of the problem, especially if that means no other problems but their own.   A conservative will point to historical optimization problems that have local optima and claim the contemporary optimization is already done if people would just get with the program.  

 

Folks like Jeff Bezos can just decide they are going to pursue space travel,  and do what is necessary to make it happen.    There's not friction in each and every decision.    An individual may make mistakes, but their internal planning will be relatively fast and coherent.  

 

Two other points:  

 

1) Obviously, groups can be exclusionary.   The `greater good' can mean "amongst Amazon shareholders or customers".

 

2) Productivity is the ratio of output to input cost.   If Bezos drives the inputs down through robotics, drones, machine learning, etc. he doesn't have to care about how humans happen to interact with one another.   This has always been the appeal of computers to me, really -- a force multiplier.   I don't want to delegate to other information workers, I want the computer to do it for me while also being able to understand every nuance if I want to.

---

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Steven A Smith <[hidden email]>
Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2016 6:31:35 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Memo To Jeff Bezos: The Most Productive Workers Are Team Players, Not Selfish Individualists | The Evolution Institute

 

I am fascinated by this general area of consideration... the struggle
between individual and collective.  This study doesn't seem to tell us
much we didn't already know... for example, that it is easy to craft a
flawed experiment where what you thought you were optimizing (metabolic
egg production) is only part of the story and a secondary trait
(aggression) was being selected for unintentionally.   Any of us who
have lived or worked in a "collective" environment (or read a Dilbert
Cartoon?) have experienced this.

I was *once* a raging individualist/Libertarian who wanted to believe
that the prime unit of survival was the individual, followed by the
nuclear family, followed by the clan, etc.!   As I have aged, two things
have overcome some of that: 1) I'm getting old and in (more) need of the
support of others, there are fewer and fewer things I can (or want to?)
do for myself (alone); 2) I've lived a life where I've experienced a
range of ways of being and I see how happy some people are *because*
they are part of a healthy collective (not as i had imagined in the
past, *in spite of* it!)

This is naturally pretty anecdotal and roughly a sample of one, but
since it is *my* experience, I believe in it's relevance and veracity.  
While we might have a wide spread of natures, experiences and conditions
on this list, I would propose that many here have a bit of both
tendencies...  high enough, individualistic abilities and interests to
become technologists (or choose the technological realm to conduct your
work), but also enough social skills/tolerance/preference to function
within one kind of institution or another.   We all have our stereotypes
about academia or government or industry to judge that one kind of
institution or the other is "better" or "worse" than the others about
this, but my experience is that they are more similar than different by
most measures.

I raised my daughters to have a strong element of my individuality/loner
mentality and I feel (because I'm a doting father) that for the most
part I succeeded.   I also gave them enough exposure (acute example:
Public School System) to "systems" that would demand out of and train
them for a certain amount of compliance.   I didn't do this because I
was afraid they would fail or starve if they weren't socialized, I did
it because despite some of my own feral tendencies, I believe that we
are herd/pack/tribe animals and for the most part ARE happier in one
kind of milieu or another.   One is a PhD Virologist who is well
ensconced in the systems of bioresearch in the US (often to her chagrin)
but has the individualism to pursue grants on her own, to work long
hours on hard problems virtually nobody else can even talk to her about
,etc.   The other has broken out of a string of administrative assistant
jobs over 1.5 decades to start her own cross-fit gym and paleo-nutrition
consultancy.   This requires equal amounts of individual
ability/motivation and herd instinct (else she wouldn't have adopted the
CrossFit(tm) brand and the Paleo appelation)...

I now only work in *very* small teams, roughly 1-3, and usually where I
am either in charge of the work scope/strategy or I am the eager support
for a singular individual whose abilities I signficantly defer to.   At
LANL, I lead teams up to 6-8 in contexts of up to 30 or more on the same
larger "project" and it was always a stressor for me.  I didn't enjoy
deciding "what is best" for that many other people, even when their
instincts/affect and the organizational model entirely supported me in
that.   So my tenure in those roles was usually limited and always
self-terminated when I got too mired in those feelings (3-7 years).

I deeply appreciate those who are good "outliers" on this spectrum...
those individualists who really can "pull it off" every time... the
protaganists of Robert A. Heinlein's novels, etc.   And on the other
end, I really respect those who manage to put themselves almost entirely
subservient to a system and yet maintain significant personal volition
and creativity.    If I could live my life again, with what I know, I
would probably attempt to apprehend that full spectrum and find ways to
engage all the way across it throughout my life.

It might seem like a total non-sequitor, but I just listened to Terry
Gross interview Leonard Cohen about his new album: "You Want it Darker"
and his experience of living as a Monk in a Zen Monastery for years.  I
think the example he represents in the extrema of writing his own
poems/songs quite uniquely and seemingly in isolation to mixing it up
both "on Boogie Street" as one song references, but also in the Monastery.

Mumble, Ramble off

On 10/26/16 1:59 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

> Any organization needs a reason to stay together.   Reasons like profit or safety.   Many organizations don't have profit sharing or the profit sharing doesn't amount to much, and is not a big motivator.    On the other extreme are organizations like nations or gangs that provide protection from the `other'.     In the middle is where most of us live, and organizations try to appeal to us by exaggerating the significance of the reward they can offer or the punishment they can impose.
>
> Overall, I think managing individuals is often about undermining individuals.   Making the organization robust to perturbation of a given set of employees without asking why it is that employees would be so inclined to cause a perturbation.    Also, it is expensive to invest in career development, and I argue the trend toward building teams is in part just a cost saving measure.   A `team' is just code for a preference (by management) for particular personality trait -- extraversion.   People that feel energized or just reassured by the presence of others as opposed to those people that may find the ongoing needs of others a drain and a distraction on their attention.
>
> If one can select such a set of people that don't expect intellectually challenging work, or a greater purpose (intrinsic motivation) for what they do, or ongoing escalations in salary or bonuses, isn't that just perfect for the people at the top?   The value of the team for this sort of team member _is_ the team.    There's no grand idea that makes them get up in the morning (or fail to), they just want to be around their friends.   So long as the members of the team are adequately competent, the work of the organization will continue, if perhaps not in a Elon Musk / Steve Jobs sort of fabulous way and life will go on.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of ?glen?
> Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2016 1:21 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Memo To Jeff Bezos: The Most Productive Workers Are Team Players, Not Selfish Individualists | The Evolution Institute
>
> I particularly liked this part:
>
>> Attributed to the once technical director of Real Madrid, Arrigo Sacchi, is an insightful quote on this recruitment model “Today’s football [soccer] is about managing the characteristics of individuals…The individual has trumped the collective. But it’s a sign of weakness. It’s reactive, not proactive”. It seems that Sacchi saw in soccer the same thing that Muir discovered in his experiments 12 years earlier; teams constructed to function as a collective are the ones that will enhance the qualities of the individuals within it and prosper.
>
>
> On 10/26/2016 12:17 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>> A little nudge to you libertarians out there from your favorite
>> Bleeding heart liberal:
>>
>> https://evolution-institute.org/article/memo-to-jeff-bezos-the-most-pr
>> oducti
>> ve-workers-are-team-players-not-selfish-individualists/?source=tvol
>
> --
> ␦glen?
>
> ============================================================
> 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
> ============================================================
> 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
>

============================================================
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

============================================================
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

============================================================
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

 

============================================================
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

 

============================================================
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

[Roger Critchlow-2]

Nick --

Look at https://storify.com/ 

-- rec --

On Wed, Oct 26, 2016 at 10:03 PM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Dear everybody,

 

On several occasions, this one included, I have gotten involved in email exchanges on FRIAM and elsewhere that were so good that I wanted to save them in chronological order and perhaps edit them into some kind of text for the authors to present elsewhere.  Two years ago I spent an entire May trying to write a macro that would do this, but it ultimately defeated me. 

 

Has anybody else thought about this problem.  I think lots of good thought gets spilt into email and never sees the light of day. 

 

Thanks for your thoughts.

 

Nick

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2016 9:11 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Memo To Jeff Bezos: The Most Productive Workers Are Team Players, Not Selfish Individualists | The Evolution Institute

 

The whole is occasionally greater than the sum of the parts.    At least as often is some crazy like Gerald bailing water to keep the ship afloat while the rest of the people are up on the dining deck admiring each other and their martinis.  

---

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Owen Densmore <[hidden email]>
Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2016 9:05:48 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Memo To Jeff Bezos: The Most Productive Workers Are Team Players, Not Selfish Individualists | The Evolution Institute

 

Synergy. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Reeds law. Yup.

 

On Wed, Oct 26, 2016 at 8:59 PM, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

I'll say yes and no:  Yes, a group of people that understand that each is distinct will bother to model one another and politely negotiate over things.    That is not a one entity (a team) doing something, it is an N-to-N activity of many entities.  But no, it is foolish to think that the N entities all have the same values or the same degree of investment, and it is foolish in any competitive environment to push people toward the mean.    There's a tendency for those with less investment (or even lower productivity) to want to create norms for those having more.    Conversely, the principals need to understand that not everyone wants to sustain 80 hour work weeks.

---

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Gillian Densmore <[hidden email]>
Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2016 8:35:23 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Memo To Jeff Bezos: The Most Productive Workers Are Team Players, Not Selfish Individualists | The Evolution Institute

 

*Smack my head* we needed a long study to show what  kids, parents, the swashbucklers and Nords already new? Comradery and being nice meens a sold and fun place to be at?

lol sigh.

 

 

On Wed, Oct 26, 2016 at 8:24 PM, Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:

Slightly relevant, I think:

http://qz.com/625870/after-years-of-intensive-analysis-google-discovers-the-key-to-good-teamwork-is-being-nice/?utm_source=kwfb&kwp_0=256037

Frank Wimberly
Phone <a href="tel:%28505%29%20670-9918" target="_blank">[phone]

 

On Oct 26, 2016 7:33 PM, "Marcus Daniels" <[hidden email]> wrote:

Steve,

 

I think it is a false dichotomy.    A healthy collective improves the lives of its members, not just a few of them.   A large collective (like our nation) will have a larger set of objectives to optimize at once.   A liberal, like me, will argue for throwing the collective resources at those harder problems.

A Libertarian will essentially argue for treating the system as a set of smaller systems and limiting the complexity of the problem, especially if that means no other problems but their own.   A conservative will point to historical optimization problems that have local optima and claim the contemporary optimization is already done if people would just get with the program.  

 

Folks like Jeff Bezos can just decide they are going to pursue space travel,  and do what is necessary to make it happen.    There's not friction in each and every decision.    An individual may make mistakes, but their internal planning will be relatively fast and coherent.  

 

Two other points:  

 

1) Obviously, groups can be exclusionary.   The `greater good' can mean "amongst Amazon shareholders or customers".

 

2) Productivity is the ratio of output to input cost.   If Bezos drives the inputs down through robotics, drones, machine learning, etc. he doesn't have to care about how humans happen to interact with one another.   This has always been the appeal of computers to me, really -- a force multiplier.   I don't want to delegate to other information workers, I want the computer to do it for me while also being able to understand every nuance if I want to.

---

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Steven A Smith <[hidden email]>
Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2016 6:31:35 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Memo To Jeff Bezos: The Most Productive Workers Are Team Players, Not Selfish Individualists | The Evolution Institute

 

I am fascinated by this general area of consideration... the struggle
between individual and collective.  This study doesn't seem to tell us
much we didn't already know... for example, that it is easy to craft a
flawed experiment where what you thought you were optimizing (metabolic
egg production) is only part of the story and a secondary trait
(aggression) was being selected for unintentionally.   Any of us who
have lived or worked in a "collective" environment (or read a Dilbert
Cartoon?) have experienced this.

I was *once* a raging individualist/Libertarian who wanted to believe
that the prime unit of survival was the individual, followed by the
nuclear family, followed by the clan, etc.!   As I have aged, two things
have overcome some of that: 1) I'm getting old and in (more) need of the
support of others, there are fewer and fewer things I can (or want to?)
do for myself (alone); 2) I've lived a life where I've experienced a
range of ways of being and I see how happy some people are *because*
they are part of a healthy collective (not as i had imagined in the
past, *in spite of* it!)

This is naturally pretty anecdotal and roughly a sample of one, but
since it is *my* experience, I believe in it's relevance and veracity.  
While we might have a wide spread of natures, experiences and conditions
on this list, I would propose that many here have a bit of both
tendencies...  high enough, individualistic abilities and interests to
become technologists (or choose the technological realm to conduct your
work), but also enough social skills/tolerance/preference to function
within one kind of institution or another.   We all have our stereotypes
about academia or government or industry to judge that one kind of
institution or the other is "better" or "worse" than the others about
this, but my experience is that they are more similar than different by
most measures.

I raised my daughters to have a strong element of my individuality/loner
mentality and I feel (because I'm a doting father) that for the most
part I succeeded.   I also gave them enough exposure (acute example:
Public School System) to "systems" that would demand out of and train
them for a certain amount of compliance.   I didn't do this because I
was afraid they would fail or starve if they weren't socialized, I did
it because despite some of my own feral tendencies, I believe that we
are herd/pack/tribe animals and for the most part ARE happier in one
kind of milieu or another.   One is a PhD Virologist who is well
ensconced in the systems of bioresearch in the US (often to her chagrin)
but has the individualism to pursue grants on her own, to work long
hours on hard problems virtually nobody else can even talk to her about
,etc.   The other has broken out of a string of administrative assistant
jobs over 1.5 decades to start her own cross-fit gym and paleo-nutrition
consultancy.   This requires equal amounts of individual
ability/motivation and herd instinct (else she wouldn't have adopted the
CrossFit(tm) brand and the Paleo appelation)...

I now only work in *very* small teams, roughly 1-3, and usually where I
am either in charge of the work scope/strategy or I am the eager support
for a singular individual whose abilities I signficantly defer to.   At
LANL, I lead teams up to 6-8 in contexts of up to 30 or more on the same
larger "project" and it was always a stressor for me.  I didn't enjoy
deciding "what is best" for that many other people, even when their
instincts/affect and the organizational model entirely supported me in
that.   So my tenure in those roles was usually limited and always
self-terminated when I got too mired in those feelings (3-7 years).

I deeply appreciate those who are good "outliers" on this spectrum...
those individualists who really can "pull it off" every time... the
protaganists of Robert A. Heinlein's novels, etc.   And on the other
end, I really respect those who manage to put themselves almost entirely
subservient to a system and yet maintain significant personal volition
and creativity.    If I could live my life again, with what I know, I
would probably attempt to apprehend that full spectrum and find ways to
engage all the way across it throughout my life.

It might seem like a total non-sequitor, but I just listened to Terry
Gross interview Leonard Cohen about his new album: "You Want it Darker"
and his experience of living as a Monk in a Zen Monastery for years.  I
think the example he represents in the extrema of writing his own
poems/songs quite uniquely and seemingly in isolation to mixing it up
both "on Boogie Street" as one song references, but also in the Monastery.

Mumble, Ramble off

On 10/26/16 1:59 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

> Any organization needs a reason to stay together.   Reasons like profit or safety.   Many organizations don't have profit sharing or the profit sharing doesn't amount to much, and is not a big motivator.    On the other extreme are organizations like nations or gangs that provide protection from the `other'.     In the middle is where most of us live, and organizations try to appeal to us by exaggerating the significance of the reward they can offer or the punishment they can impose.
>
> Overall, I think managing individuals is often about undermining individuals.   Making the organization robust to perturbation of a given set of employees without asking why it is that employees would be so inclined to cause a perturbation.    Also, it is expensive to invest in career development, and I argue the trend toward building teams is in part just a cost saving measure.   A `team' is just code for a preference (by management) for particular personality trait -- extraversion.   People that feel energized or just reassured by the presence of others as opposed to those people that may find the ongoing needs of others a drain and a distraction on their attention.
>
> If one can select such a set of people that don't expect intellectually challenging work, or a greater purpose (intrinsic motivation) for what they do, or ongoing escalations in salary or bonuses, isn't that just perfect for the people at the top?   The value of the team for this sort of team member _is_ the team.    There's no grand idea that makes them get up in the morning (or fail to), they just want to be around their friends.   So long as the members of the team are adequately competent, the work of the organization will continue, if perhaps not in a Elon Musk / Steve Jobs sort of fabulous way and life will go on.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of ?glen?
> Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2016 1:21 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Memo To Jeff Bezos: The Most Productive Workers Are Team Players, Not Selfish Individualists | The Evolution Institute
>
> I particularly liked this part:
>
>> Attributed to the once technical director of Real Madrid, Arrigo Sacchi, is an insightful quote on this recruitment model “Today’s football [soccer] is about managing the characteristics of individuals…The individual has trumped the collective. But it’s a sign of weakness. It’s reactive, not proactive”. It seems that Sacchi saw in soccer the same thing that Muir discovered in his experiments 12 years earlier; teams constructed to function as a collective are the ones that will enhance the qualities of the individuals within it and prosper.
>
>
> On 10/26/2016 12:17 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>> A little nudge to you libertarians out there from your favorite
>> Bleeding heart liberal:
>>
>> https://evolution-institute.org/article/memo-to-jeff-bezos-the-most-pr
>> oducti
>> ve-workers-are-team-players-not-selfish-individualists/?source=tvol
>
> --
> ␦glen?
>
> ============================================================
> 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
> ============================================================
> 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
>

============================================================
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

============================================================
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

============================================================
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

 

============================================================
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

 

============================================================
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

============================================================
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

[Owen Densmore]

I'm sure there is a reasonable solution, but would require effort, an editorial role.

​If you do start putting snippets together, I'd recommend https://medium.com/ as the site to use. It's outlook is less bloggy and more chatty, yet your posts can be organized under your name or a tag. 

They also are clear it is about *writing* and *stories*, not tech. They even had the nerve to *not* use Markdown, thus losing most techies. ​ :)

   -- Owen

On Thu, Oct 27, 2016 at 6:44 AM, Roger Critchlow <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick --

Look at https://storify.com/ 

-- rec --

On Wed, Oct 26, 2016 at 10:03 PM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Dear everybody,

 

On several occasions, this one included, I have gotten involved in email exchanges on FRIAM and elsewhere that were so good that I wanted to save them in chronological order and perhaps edit them into some kind of text for the authors to present elsewhere.  Two years ago I spent an entire May trying to write a macro that would do this, but it ultimately defeated me. 

 

Has anybody else thought about this problem.  I think lots of good thought gets spilt into email and never sees the light of day. 

 

Thanks for your thoughts.

 

Nick

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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[Owen Densmore]

Oh, forgot: Techies who beam into medium should use an incognito window so that it shows its vanilla welcome page, not one based on your internet profile. Maybe true for all of us. Chrome: click on the url with the ctl key down and a popup will offer incognito as an option.

   -- Owen

On Thu, Oct 27, 2016 at 10:28 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

I'm sure there is a reasonable solution, but would require effort, an editorial role.

​If you do start putting snippets together, I'd recommend https://medium.com/ as the site to use. It's outlook is less bloggy and more chatty, yet your posts can be organized under your name or a tag. 

They also are clear it is about *writing* and *stories*, not tech. They even had the nerve to *not* use Markdown, thus losing most techies. ​ :)

   -- Owen

On Thu, Oct 27, 2016 at 6:44 AM, Roger Critchlow <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick --

Look at https://storify.com/ 

-- rec --

On Wed, Oct 26, 2016 at 10:03 PM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Dear everybody,

 

On several occasions, this one included, I have gotten involved in email exchanges on FRIAM and elsewhere that were so good that I wanted to save them in chronological order and perhaps edit them into some kind of text for the authors to present elsewhere.  Two years ago I spent an entire May trying to write a macro that would do this, but it ultimately defeated me. 

 

Has anybody else thought about this problem.  I think lots of good thought gets spilt into email and never sees the light of day. 

 

Thanks for your thoughts.

 

Nick

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[Nick Thompson]

Hi Owen, Hi everybody,

 

Oh, I love it when you-guys talk dirty.   My citizen imagination LEAPS to the idea of a vanilla welcome.  And a popup that offers incognito, Oh MAN!  I would eat that pop-up and wander the streets of Santa Fe as invisible as a ghost.   Or is that a pop-over?

 

Is the problem THIS hard?  It would seem to me that the first step would be to simply reorder the email messages eliminating any previous email messages automatically included in each subsequent message.  Once the messages were in the right order and the inclusions of previous messages were eliminated, I could write macro’s to get rid of the headers.  By inclusions I don’t mean places where somebody intentionally pulled out a passage from somebody’s message to comment on.  (I believe you call that quotation.)  I mean the routine inclusion of prior messages as a part of the reply process. 

 

Nick

 

 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Owen Densmore
Sent: Thursday, October 27, 2016 10:33 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically"

 

Oh, forgot: Techies who beam into medium should use an incognito window so that it shows its vanilla welcome page, not one based on your internet profile. Maybe true for all of us. Chrome: click on the url with the ctl key down and a popup will offer incognito as an option.

 

   -- Owen

 

On Thu, Oct 27, 2016 at 10:28 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

I'm sure there is a reasonable solution, but would require effort, an editorial role.

 

​If you do start putting snippets together, I'd recommend https://medium.com/ as the site to use. It's outlook is less bloggy and more chatty, yet your posts can be organized under your name or a tag. 

 

They also are clear it is about *writing* and *stories*, not tech. They even had the nerve to *not* use Markdown, thus losing most techies. ​ :)

 

   -- Owen

 

On Thu, Oct 27, 2016 at 6:44 AM, Roger Critchlow <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick --

 

Look at https://storify.com/ 

 

-- rec --

 

On Wed, Oct 26, 2016 at 10:03 PM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Dear everybody,

 

On several occasions, this one included, I have gotten involved in email exchanges on FRIAM and elsewhere that were so good that I wanted to save them in chronological order and perhaps edit them into some kind of text for the authors to present elsewhere.  Two years ago I spent an entire May trying to write a macro that would do this, but it ultimately defeated me. 

 

Has anybody else thought about this problem.  I think lots of good thought gets spilt into email and never sees the light of day. 

 

Thanks for your thoughts.

 

Nick

 

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

“I have gotten involved in email exchanges on FRIAM and elsewhere that were so good that I wanted to save them in chronological order and perhaps edit them into some kind of text for the authors to present elsewhere.”

 

If you think there is value in some discussion, a better thing to do IMO is synthesize the takeaway into another discussion, in whatever (same or different) venue.    But then, I’ll never understand why Instagram is so popular either.  People with cameras are so irritating!    Participate in the moment, don’t construct a picture of it to share with your real friends later.

Marcus

 

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[Owen Densmore]

Here's an idea, to help clarify the discussion. Could you choose a thread you like and try to make an article or post from it?

That'd give us an idea of your goal. There are a lot of possibilities, I think.

   -- Owen

On Wed, Oct 26, 2016 at 11:03 PM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Dear everybody,

 

On several occasions, this one included, I have gotten involved in email exchanges on FRIAM and elsewhere that were so good that I wanted to save them in chronological order and perhaps edit them into some kind of text for the authors to present elsewhere.  Two years ago I spent an entire May trying to write a macro that would do this, but it ultimately defeated me. 

 

Has anybody else thought about this problem.  I think lots of good thought gets spilt into email and never sees the light of day. 

 

Thanks for your thoughts.

 

Nick

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

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[gepr]

Let's think about what you're asking for a minute.  There are very few on the list who care to spend the energy to participate at all.  such lurkers undoubtedly have valuable opinions.  But there's some hurdle of effort (or unwillingness) that prevents them from expressing those opinions.  Of the people who _do_ participate, very few of them can find the energy to delete all the extra characters, even those added automatically by the mailing list software (at the bottom of each post).  I can't even explain how easy it is to delete that before responding.  That nobody does it is absolutely flabbergasting, to me.  But there it is.

So, when you ask whether it's really that hard, it spawns the questions: Is it really that hard to trim/edit one's replies?  ... to use the threading feature of one's email client?  ... to ignore threads or particular posters? ... to standardize things across email clients (e.g. the quotation prefix and "quote" line, plain text vs. html, character encodings)?

The answers to all these questions is "No"  it's not hard at all.  These are all problems that have been solved multiple times in other contexts.  But it is work (as distinct from play).  And work usually requires incentive.  What's the incentive?


On 10/27/2016 10:29 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Is the problem THIS hard?  It would seem to me that the first step would be to simply reorder the email messages eliminating any previous email messages automatically included in each subsequent message.  Once the messages were in the right order and the inclusions of previous messages were eliminated, I could write macro’s to get rid of the headers.  By inclusions I don’t mean places where somebody intentionally pulled out a passage from somebody’s message to comment on.  (I believe you call that quotation.)  I mean the routine inclusion of prior messages as a part of the reply process.

--
␦glen?

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

"... to standardize things across email clients (e.g. the quotation prefix and "quote" line, plain text vs. html, character encodings)?"

My favorite is that Outlook's re-encoding of :-) shows up as the letter J.    That kind of defeats the original purpose of text art -- that it is portable across clients.  I heard the latest version of Emacs now supports Webkit HTML.  For me, quoting sanity went to hell when I stopped using Emacs for my mail program.   Well now Emacs does HTML, but I have been hijacked by the calendar capability in Outlook.   Obviously I wouldn't want to lose the ability to have other people schedule my day.  

Marcius
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[gepr]

In reaction to Nick's question, I re-installed VM (https://launchpad.net/vm), which I used to use.  I think you used gnus, but maybe RMAIL... I used to generate digests to store or forward various threads and such back when I used VM.  It doesn't seem to work the way I remember it, though.  I _almost_ reinstalled it awhile back in order to collect my own posts for programming MegaHAL to create geprbot.  But I got lazy and used sed instead.

All that to say, I'm ... about ... this ... close ... to going back to emacs for my mail client.  Luckily nobody cares enough about my time to schedule it for me.

On 10/28/2016 12:30 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> My favorite is that Outlook's re-encoding of :-) shows up as the letter J.    That kind of defeats the original purpose of text art -- that it is portable across clients.  I heard the latest version of Emacs now supports Webkit HTML.  For me, quoting sanity went to hell when I stopped using Emacs for my mail program.   Well now Emacs does HTML, but I have been hijacked by the calendar capability in Outlook.   Obviously I wouldn't want to lose the ability to have other people schedule my day.  


--
␦glen?

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[Steve Smith]

Two points:

The more mundane first.  I think Nick is really *wanting* more than is
implied by the specific question.   I guess I would claim (if I
understand Nick's intention well) that if *everyone* *always* left the
included text from the earlier parts of the thread, the entire thread
would exist in linear form (with whatever cruft each mailer adds to
indicate inclusion) with full context.   I find myself alternating
between eliminating the text of what I'm responding to and leaving it
entirely out, and "larding" ( a term Nick so generously introduced us
to) my responses into the text.   Each mode fits different contexts (and
moods) for me.

The biggest challenge (I think) to leaving all the text included (other
than just text/data bloat) is that many of us aren't responding to the
entire linear text of every response that came before... we are often
responding only to part of it which suggests a tree structure rather
than a simple  linear "thread" as we colloquial call it... it is more of
a multi-filiament?

Both of these point to the value of an "editorial role"... which is
there to tease out or highlight or contextualize this complex
"conversation".   I assume Nick is asking for syntactic help in
rendering the myriad modes of inclusion and formatting down to something
simple and linearized...

I still miss Nick's effort to set up a self-curated system for this with
his "noodles" as introduced at SFx nearly 10 years ago. Very few of us
(Arlo?) engaged in it, but it was interesting enough for me to give it a
whirl...



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[gepr]

On 10/28/2016 02:00 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> The biggest challenge (I think) to leaving all the text included (other than just text/data bloat) is that many of us aren't responding to the entire linear text of every response that came before... we are often responding only to part of it which suggests a tree structure rather than a simple  linear "thread" as we colloquial call it... it is more of a multi-filiament?

Just to help ensure my sanity, my email subject window looks like this:

    https://goo.gl/photos/thJWHVxy8cfPv3Qq7

I've always assumed everyone else's does too... So, when one looks at the content of a mailing list like this, they can _see_ trees of threads, right?  If not, I highly recommend a modern client. 8^)  It helps a lot.

Now for a little thread hijacking:
> ...  I think Nick is really *wanting* more than is implied by the specific question. ...

Renee' uses the grammatical construct like "I am wanting ..." or "She was wanting ..." all the time.  It drives me batty, though I've kept my mouth shut about it so far.  I suppose it's correct in some sense.  I just cannot make myself think that way.  If I want something, then I want it... not wanting for it or anything weird like that.  Maybe you can tell me how "Nick is wanting" structures your thoughts different from "Nick wants"?

--
☣ glen

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[Steve Smith]

Glen -
> Just to help ensure my sanity, my email subject window looks like this:
>
>    https://goo.gl/photos/thJWHVxy8cfPv3Qq7
>
> I've always assumed everyone else's does too... So, when one looks at
> the content of a mailing list like this, they can _see_ trees of
> threads, right?  If not, I highly recommend a modern client. 8^)  It
> helps a lot.
I agree... but I think many/most don't see this view and I don't believe
many will obtain one soon nor easily.

>  Maybe you can tell me how "Nick is wanting" structures your thoughts
> different from "Nick wants"?
I think it is my perceived tentativeness of what I think Nick wants...
meaning I'm not sure he knows what he wants or understands the
implications of what he wants.   I'm not sure about the grammatical or
semantic roots of this (why I use "is wanting" over "wants") but it is
interesting to me that you can call it out so clearly.   Unfortunately I
am probably conflating or convolving my own unsureness of what I *think*
Nicks wants into what I believe to be his own lack of clarity...

For contrast, I think I would be MUCH less likely to use the same
phrasing to describe my understanding of what I *think* YOU want... or
Marcus... or many others here who have a crisper sense of confidence in
what you are asking/suggesting.   Our patron St. Stephen of Guerin, I am
*much* more likely to use "he is wanting".... perhaps Renee's "I am
wanting" vs "I want" reflects some of this same ambiguity of detail?  
If she were more precise in her own mind about what she wants, might she
be more likely to use the more assertive?

Hey Nick!  Don't you love it when people talk about you like you aren't
here?

- Steve




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[Marcus G. Daniels]

<<Renee' uses the grammatical construct like "I am wanting ..." or "She was wanting ..." all the time.  It drives me batty, though I've kept my mouth shut about it so far.>>

Read:  "I am large I contain multitudes."     Like, say, an amygdala and a frontal cortex, the latter remarking on the functioning of the former.  

Marcus
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[Steve Smith]

Marcus -

What a wonderfully cryptic yet compelling explanation/example?   Are you
suggesting a certain grandiosity?  Or another way of alluding to the
ambiguity I am suggesting?   Or perhaps an emotional wanting vs a more
intellectual wanting?

     "Enquiring megalo-minds are wanting to know!"
- Steve
> <<Renee' uses the grammatical construct like "I am wanting ..." or "She was wanting ..." all the time.  It drives me batty, though I've kept my mouth shut about it so far.>>
>
> Read:  "I am large I contain multitudes."     Like, say, an amygdala and a frontal cortex, the latter remarking on the functioning of the former.
>
> Marcus
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[Marcus G. Daniels]

Not grandiosity, simply a triaging of signals with no preconceived notion that derived or post-processed signals are better or worse than raw signals, except the raw signals arrive as a news report.   Collapse the wave function if you want, but that was already a minute ago.  

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Friday, October 28, 2016 4:19 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically"

Marcus -

What a wonderfully cryptic yet compelling explanation/example?   Are you
suggesting a certain grandiosity?  Or another way of alluding to the
ambiguity I am suggesting?   Or perhaps an emotional wanting vs a more
intellectual wanting?

     "Enquiring megalo-minds are wanting to know!"
- Steve

> <<Renee' uses the grammatical construct like "I am wanting ..." or
> "She was wanting ..." all the time.  It drives me batty, though I've
> kept my mouth shut about it so far.>>
>
> Read:  "I am large I contain multitudes."     Like, say, an amygdala and a frontal cortex, the latter remarking on the functioning of the former.
>
> Marcus
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[gepr]

On 10/28/2016 03:10 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
>> I've always assumed everyone else's does too... So, when one looks at the content of a mailing list like this, they can _see_ trees of threads, right?  If not, I highly recommend a modern client. 8^)  It helps a lot.
> I agree... but I think many/most don't see this view and I don't believe many will obtain one soon nor easily.

It's just Mozilla Thunderbird (well, Icedove on one machine, Thunderbird on another)... It's free and open source, which means anyone can have it if they want it.  I also think I remember Eudora having a nice tree-based threaded view.  Pretty much any usenet reader has it.  So, I'm confused why others wouldn't use such tools.

>>  Maybe you can tell me how "Nick is wanting" structures your thoughts different from "Nick wants"?
> I think it is my perceived tentativeness of what I think Nick wants... meaning I'm not sure he knows what he wants or understands the implications of what he wants.   I'm not sure about the grammatical or semantic roots of this (why I use "is wanting" over "wants") but it is interesting to me that you can call it out so clearly.   Unfortunately I am probably conflating or convolving my own unsureness of what I *think* Nicks wants into what I believe to be his own lack of clarity...
>
> For contrast, I think I would be MUCH less likely to use the same phrasing to describe my understanding of what I *think* YOU want... or Marcus... or many others here who have a crisper sense of confidence in what you are asking/suggesting.   Our patron St. Stephen of Guerin, I am *much* more likely to use "he is wanting".... perhaps Renee's "I am wanting" vs "I want" reflects some of this same ambiguity of detail?   If she were more precise in her own mind about what she wants, might she be more likely to use the more assertive?

That's intriguing, as is Marcus'.  I have noticed (and have the guts to point out for some reason) that lots of people express their thoughts with an external locus of control.  My favorite example was when I noticed the CO^2 regulator on our office keg was broken.  I asked my partner: What happened to the CO^2?  He said "It broke."  >8^)  I asked for more clarity and he responded something like: "I was <doingsomethingorother> and it fell over and broke."  So, I asserted: "Do you mean that you broke it?"  And he relented and said "Yes."

Perhaps there is something of that in both your and Marcus' response.  It's a kind of removal/abstraction/distancing from any intimate knowledge or clarity surrounding the itch ... left wanting some scratching.

--
☣ glen

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[Nick Thompson]

At the very minimum, nick wants to take an email exchange and render it as a "correspondence", in the classic literary sense: i.e., in the order in which it was written.  Because all the messages would be on the page in front of you, no quotation would be necessary, except possibly in the case of larding.  Because Nick is a lazy old coot, he wants the software to do most of the work for him.  He then intends to strip away all the identifying material and fatten his purse by publishing your good ideas under his own name.  Now is that clear? 

 

Conceptually, this is easy as pied.  In point of fact, because of all the quotation, it is next to impossible.

 

Nick

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Friday, October 28, 2016 4:11 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically"

 

Glen -

> Just to help ensure my sanity, my email subject window looks like this:

> 

>    https://goo.gl/photos/thJWHVxy8cfPv3Qq7

> 

> I've always assumed everyone else's does too... So, when one looks at

> the content of a mailing list like this, they can _see_ trees of

> threads, right?  If not, I highly recommend a modern client. 8^)  It

> helps a lot.

I agree... but I think many/most don't see this view and I don't believe many will obtain one soon nor easily.

 

>  Maybe you can tell me how "Nick is wanting" structures your thoughts

> different from "Nick wants"?

I think it is my perceived tentativeness of what I think Nick wants...

meaning I'm not sure he knows what he wants or understands the

implications of what he wants.   I'm not sure about the grammatical or

semantic roots of this (why I use "is wanting" over "wants") but it is

interesting to me that you can call it out so clearly.   Unfortunately I

am probably conflating or convolving my own unsureness of what I *think* Nicks wants into what I believe to be his own lack of clarity...

 

For contrast, I think I would be MUCH less likely to use the same phrasing to describe my understanding of what I *think* YOU want... or Marcus... or many others here who have a crisper sense of confidence in

what you are asking/suggesting.   Our patron St. Stephen of Guerin, I am

*much* more likely to use "he is wanting".... perhaps Renee's "I am

wanting" vs "I want" reflects some of this same ambiguity of detail?  

If she were more precise in her own mind about what she wants, might she be more likely to use the more assertive?

 

Hey Nick!  Don't you love it when people talk about you like you aren't here?

 

- Steve

 

 

 

 

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[Owen Densmore]

That's why I recommend trying it by hand on a thread of interest.

Basically this is a form of "storyboarding", look at the sequence of steps needed for the desired "correspondence".

The fine details emerge and help set the direction of the project more clearly.

   -- Owen

On Fri, Oct 28, 2016 at 5:25 PM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

At the very minimum, nick wants to take an email exchange and render it as a "correspondence", in the classic literary sense: i.e., in the order in which it was written.  Because all the messages would be on the page in front of you, no quotation would be necessary, except possibly in the case of larding.  Because Nick is a lazy old coot, he wants the software to do most of the work for him.  He then intends to strip away all the identifying material and fatten his purse by publishing your good ideas under his own name.  Now is that clear? 

 

Conceptually, this is easy as pied.  In point of fact, because of all the quotation, it is next to impossible.

 

Nick

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Friday, October 28, 2016 4:11 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically"

 

Glen -

> Just to help ensure my sanity, my email subject window looks like this:

> 

>    https://goo.gl/photos/thJWHVxy8cfPv3Qq7

> 

> I've always assumed everyone else's does too... So, when one looks at

> the content of a mailing list like this, they can _see_ trees of

> threads, right?  If not, I highly recommend a modern client. 8^)  It

> helps a lot.

I agree... but I think many/most don't see this view and I don't believe many will obtain one soon nor easily.

 

>  Maybe you can tell me how "Nick is wanting" structures your thoughts

> different from "Nick wants"?

I think it is my perceived tentativeness of what I think Nick wants...

meaning I'm not sure he knows what he wants or understands the

implications of what he wants.   I'm not sure about the grammatical or

semantic roots of this (why I use "is wanting" over "wants") but it is

interesting to me that you can call it out so clearly.   Unfortunately I

am probably conflating or convolving my own unsureness of what I *think* Nicks wants into what I believe to be his own lack of clarity...

 

For contrast, I think I would be MUCH less likely to use the same phrasing to describe my understanding of what I *think* YOU want... or Marcus... or many others here who have a crisper sense of confidence in

what you are asking/suggesting.   Our patron St. Stephen of Guerin, I am

*much* more likely to use "he is wanting".... perhaps Renee's "I am

wanting" vs "I want" reflects some of this same ambiguity of detail?  

If she were more precise in her own mind about what she wants, might she be more likely to use the more assertive?

 

Hey Nick!  Don't you love it when people talk about you like you aren't here?

 

- Steve

 

 

 

 

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[Steve Smith]

Glen -

I am a Mozilla/Tbird Man myself but am used to many people clinging to
very oldschool text-only (or worse?) mail tools.   I also don't have any
trouble sorting the complexity of comment/response/inlining/inclusion in
my head for the most part, but that is how my head works... I think that
is excruciating unto impossible for some.

I do acknowledge/agree-to your description of the experience of "to
want" vs "to be wanting"...  I personally mostly *want* what I want but
I also know the feeling of *to be wanting*.  It isn't a simple question
of expression... it is a deeper experience of association/dissociation
and intention IMO.

Your example of the co-worker distancing himself from the
responsibilty/agency of "breaking" something is a red herring in this
case (I think)... it may be related, but not directly?

I agree that there is a distancing/abstraction from the itch as you put
it, but at least in my own case, expressing it as "I am wanting" rather
than "I want" is intentional and an attempt to be more responsible or
precise about what I mean.

I suppose, a difference between "I want" and "I am wanting" involves
actionability.   If I tell you "I want" something, you should be put on
notice that I am likely to take action to pursue acquiring/achieving the
subject of that wanting.  But if I say "I am wanting", you can take some
solace (or not) in knowing that I have not internalized that "wanting"
into any formulated action. In the language of the 10 commandments, it
is the subtle distinction between finding your house or wife
attractive/compelling/desireable and actually finding myself making
plans to move in and shag her first chance I get.   Yahweh didn't have
PowerPoint and a numerically controlled stone chisel to put in these
subtleties with sub-bullet points?  Or were those tablets clay,
suggesting a 3d deposition printer instead?

In the case at hand (Nick's want or wanting), I would say he is not
asking anyone specifically to take action, to find or create the toolset
he is seeking, he is just speculating out loud and probably *hoping*
such things already exist or perhaps someone else actually *wants* the
toolset enough to create it.

Have I split the dead horse hair enough yet?   I am wanting to know (but
don't feel compelled to tell me)!

<gurgle>

- Steve

On 10/28/16 4:45 PM, glen ☣ wrote:

> On 10/28/2016 03:10 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
>>> I've always assumed everyone else's does too... So, when one looks
>>> at the content of a mailing list like this, they can _see_ trees of
>>> threads, right?  If not, I highly recommend a modern client. 8^)  It
>>> helps a lot.
>> I agree... but I think many/most don't see this view and I don't
>> believe many will obtain one soon nor easily.
>
> It's just Mozilla Thunderbird (well, Icedove on one machine,
> Thunderbird on another)... It's free and open source, which means
> anyone can have it if they want it.  I also think I remember Eudora
> having a nice tree-based threaded view.  Pretty much any usenet reader
> has it.  So, I'm confused why others wouldn't use such tools.
>
>>>  Maybe you can tell me how "Nick is wanting" structures your
>>> thoughts different from "Nick wants"?
>> I think it is my perceived tentativeness of what I think Nick
>> wants... meaning I'm not sure he knows what he wants or understands
>> the implications of what he wants.   I'm not sure about the
>> grammatical or semantic roots of this (why I use "is wanting" over
>> "wants") but it is interesting to me that you can call it out so
>> clearly.   Unfortunately I am probably conflating or convolving my
>> own unsureness of what I *think* Nicks wants into what I believe to
>> be his own lack of clarity...
>>
>> For contrast, I think I would be MUCH less likely to use the same
>> phrasing to describe my understanding of what I *think* YOU want...
>> or Marcus... or many others here who have a crisper sense of
>> confidence in what you are asking/suggesting.   Our patron St.
>> Stephen of Guerin, I am *much* more likely to use "he is wanting"....
>> perhaps Renee's "I am wanting" vs "I want" reflects some of this same
>> ambiguity of detail?   If she were more precise in her own mind about
>> what she wants, might she be more likely to use the more assertive?
>
> That's intriguing, as is Marcus'.  I have noticed (and have the guts
> to point out for some reason) that lots of people express their
> thoughts with an external locus of control.  My favorite example was
> when I noticed the CO^2 regulator on our office keg was broken.  I
> asked my partner: What happened to the CO^2?  He said "It broke."  
> >8^)  I asked for more clarity and he responded something like: "I was
> <doingsomethingorother> and it fell over and broke."  So, I asserted:
> "Do you mean that you broke it?"  And he relented and said "Yes."
>
> Perhaps there is something of that in both your and Marcus' response.  
> It's a kind of removal/abstraction/distancing from any intimate
> knowledge or clarity surrounding the itch ... left wanting some
> scratching.
>

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