I am of two minds on this (Marcus' point about too much thin,
incremental, even vapid publication)
I can't possibly keep up with the publications that might be of direct
relevance to my work, much less within my scope of interest and am
sometimes frustrated with the sheer volume and the noise/signal ratio of
it. This list has a MUCH higher noise/signal ratio by some measures
but as I know many of the members in person or via the discussions here
(or their professional publications), I am motivated to track most if
not all of it. Because I am interested in *people* and *ideas* as much
as I am in *things* and *processes*.
I am *thankful* for the promiscuous publishing sometimes when I am
"noodling" on a new idea... I appreciate the likelihood that I will find
hints if others have approached the same ideas from *any* angle, much
less my own. Of course I *hate* to get scooped, but I *love* to build
on the work of others, so it is a fine line between resenting and
appreciating all of those who publish (formally or just via ramblings on
a list like this) their ideas so promiscuously.
On 10/29/16 8:49 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
Nick,
Personally, I think there are too many meetings and proceedings of
same. There are too many thin papers where it obviously isn't
possible to reproduce the result without a lot more context, and
where the authors assume already having a lot of knowledge most
readers won't have (even with the supplementary material). Consider
the cutting-edge articles in Science that run 2 pages! They are
nothing more than advertisements. And that's the good stuff. Then
there are a lot of papers that are just incrementalism and don't
really add any clever new ideas or help other people benefit from the
incremental work (e.g. by publishing code or data or device designs).
They are publishing for the sake of publishing. I wish they
wouldn't. It's a waste of everyone's time. If this list in some
small way occasionally makes someone say to themselves, "Rats, I've
been scooped", I'd call that a great success.
Marcus
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:* Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> on behalf of Nick Thompson
<nickthomp...@earthlink.net>
*Sent:* Friday, October 28, 2016 11:58:23 PM
*To:* 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
*Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS
NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically"
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/%7Enickthompson/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.
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