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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