Hi, Owen, and all,
You have me right. There’s a big difference between entertaining a question – noodling, if you will – and demanding an answer. Confession time: I come from a world in which success is measured out in published writing. That’s not the only world, but it’s a world. During my 12 years with you folks I have seen a dozen great papers slip through our grasp and into oblivion on the FRIAM list for want of an easy way to transpose our correspondence into coherent text, text that could be read with pleasure by others. I once was an experienced developmental editor …. Several edited collections on various subjects. Every time I read one of these email exchanges I get itchy editorial fingers. In fact, I always get itchy editorial fingers when I see good ideas go to waste. Owen, you are also correct that I have had this problem for years. When I was a professor I spent a lot of time working with the writing of students. I had a terrible time getting student to think of themselves as the sort of creatures who had ideas about the world which they needed to defend in writing. I had an even worse time trying to convince them that people who disagreed with them were their great allies in developing an argument. They saw papers as something you wrote to make professors happy, not as vehicles for changing the thoughts of others. But to my joy, when email distribution lists came around, I got them to argue in email because they didn’t think of email as Writing. In email, they found it easier to argue as if the arguments made a difference. But I never could get them to take the next step and edit their correspondence into collaborative writing. I had to settle for letting them present their email-arguments, reprinted in sequence, in lieu of final papers, which I did, reluctantly, for years. Even since that time, I have wondered what if a software could be invented that would re-present an email discussion in its rhetorical order, so that email correspondence could readily be seen as a step to the development of published writing that convinces. Would such a software unleash a flood of collaboration? I dunno, but I would love to see. By the way, I have found the discussion about the “grammar of wanting” very interesting. It is the kind of issue that normally would lead me to join you in the wallow, but I haven’t been feeling all that well, lately, and there has been lots of incoming, so I have had to watch from the shore. Let me just say that I think that each of those ways of wanting corresponds to a different higher order pattern of behavior, and that all of you are as privileged as I to decide which kind of wanting I have been engaging in. Thanks for all your thoughts. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Owen Densmore Sent: Friday, October 28, 2016 8:28 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically" Sorry to be pedestrian, but how about the OP's desire to convert thread(s) into posts/correspondence? I take Nick seriously here, it has been his goal from the beginning, right? -- Owen On Fri, Oct 28, 2016 at 5:56 PM, Steven A Smith <sasm...@swcp.com <mailto:sasm...@swcp.com> > wrote: 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. ============================================================ 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
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