Posted by
Nick Thompson on
Sep 16, 2009; 4:24am
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Re-comm-was-Re-FW-Re-Emergence-Seminar-BritishEmergence-tp3654051.html
Marcus,
Hmmm! This communication is a case in point. You hear me to say something
like .... forgive the hyperbole ... I have to know whether Marcus's father
flogged him with wet noodles before I can understand what he means by his
views on writing in forums and listservs. But that is not what I meant to
say. I meant to say that language is always ambiguous and that you have to
build a big picture of what is being said out of the little words that are
offered you. Before you responded to my message, you built a model of my
mind. I would say you built the wrong model, although (at the risk of
drawing Russ back to this argument) we might bring evidence to bear and
argue that point. In short, we held different models of my mind, and it
led to a misunderstanding.
If one tries to be aware of the different models that might be built on the
same words, it helps to make a conversation more fruitful, I believe. If
one has read some history of thinking on the subject, one has more
potential models available to apply to any utterance. One is more likely
to understand what the speaker meant.
I thought the comment on the New Criticism was interesting, but I am not
sure it's relevant here. Literature is not designed to inform in the same
way that I assume [hmmmm!] postings to this list are designed to inform.
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University (
[hidden email])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> [Original Message]
> From: Marcus G. Daniels <
[hidden email]>
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
[hidden email]>
> Date: 9/15/2009 3:40:14 PM
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] comm. (was Re: FW:
Re:Emergence Seminar--BritishEmergence)
>
> Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> > I was puzzled, when you wrote ...
> >
> > "It could be to communicate, but it could
> > also be to entertain or to manipulate. If a reader thinks they are
> > modeling a writer's *mind* (holy crap, the arrogance..), it's likely
> > they are just going down the road the writer so competently put out for
> > them."
> >
> > What sort of a "mind" did you have in mind? There are those of us out
here
> > that think that mind is just an individuals longstanding pattern of
> > response and sensitiivity. So when you read what I write, you have to
try
> > and gather, from the short sample that I give you, what the over all
> > pattern is. So it may be arrogance, but isnt it also a necessity?
Arent
> > you constantly building models of the minds of the people around you?
> >
> I may or may not be. Why would you assume that it is effective for me,
> in order to better understand your arguments, to model YOU? Just the
> opposite could be true. It could be better for me to filter out the
> noise (a highly parameterized model of someone's personality) to get to
> the signal (the point or its absence).
>
> Down with straw men,
>
> Marcus
>
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