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

[Nick Thompson]

Eric, 

 

I never knew we were working in WAVE. I just knew I was grateful for the help 
you were giving me ordering my thoughts.   I will look into it.  Is it capable 
of reconstructing a thread after the fact, or is it a system for creating 
threads that can be reconstructed? 

 

Nick  

 

 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

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

 

From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Monday, October 31, 2016 6:37 AM
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"

 

Not to burst bubbles 

Isn't this one of the challenges that Google Wave  
 was intended to solve? Admittedly, 
Wave isn't a way to fix old email threads, but if "turning email threads into 
documents" was a common desire, Wave would have been more popular. 

 

For those not familiar: Wave basically started with an email/online doc, and 
then allowed you to write as if you were adding to a thread, along with 
infinite larding and responding to larded comments, and simply displayed them 
all as a tracked-changes multi-authored document (where you could go back in 
time to see edits). I managed to muscle Nick into co-authoring a publication 
using Wave, after goading him with chunks of text cut and pasted from earlier 
FRIAM email threads. I am, frankly, surprised that some of the associated 
abilities haven't been integrated into Gmail. A few of the capabilities were 
taken into Google docs, but those capabilities are painfully limited compared 
what was available in Wave. At this point, Wave lays peacefully in the Google 
Graveyard, as the Apache Foundation sort of picked it up, but, from what I can 
tell, hasn't done much with it for the past 6 years. 

 

 

 

 





---
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Supervisory Survey Statistician

U.S. Marine Corps

 

On Sat, Oct 29, 2016 at 8:02 PM, glen ep ropella  > wrote:



On October 28, 2016 7:28:22 PM PDT, Owen Densmore  > wrote:
>Sorry to be pedestrian, but how about the OP's desire to convert
>thread(s)
>into posts/correspondence?

But that was my point in mentioning a tree threaded mail reader, especially an 
open source one. It should be a matter of straightforward engineering to 
extract the part of tbird that makes a tree out of a thread. That code could be 
the launch point for a tool to do what we want.

Determining whether a line prefixed with the quote char is intentionally quoted 
or detritus should be easy enough. If all remaining text after the nonquoted 
part is quoted, then it can be tossed. But if there is a quoted part followed 
by a nonquoted part, it should remain.

I really think 80 to 90 % of what Nick wants exists.  But there's no incentive 
to do that work. And the amount of work to go from 80% to 100% is always large.

--
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

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

[Eric Charles]

Not to burst bubbles
Isn't this one of the challenges that Google Wave
was intended to solve?
Admittedly, Wave isn't a way to fix old email threads, but if "turning
email threads into documents" was a common desire, Wave would have been
more popular.

For those not familiar: Wave basically started with an email/online doc,
and then allowed you to write as if you were adding to a thread, along
with infinite larding and responding to larded comments, and simply
displayed them all as a tracked-changes multi-authored document (where you
could go back in time to see edits). I managed to muscle Nick into
co-authoring a publication using Wave, after goading him with chunks of
text cut and pasted from earlier FRIAM email threads. I am, frankly,
surprised that some of the associated abilities haven't been integrated
into Gmail. A few of the capabilities were taken into Google docs, but
those capabilities are painfully limited compared what was available
in Wave. At this point, Wave lays peacefully in the Google Graveyard, as
the Apache Foundation sort of picked it up, but, from what I can tell,
hasn't done much with it for the past 6 years.






---
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Supervisory Survey Statistician
U.S. Marine Corps


On Sat, Oct 29, 2016 at 8:02 PM, glen ep ropella 
wrote:

>
>
> On October 28, 2016 7:28:22 PM PDT, Owen Densmore 
> wrote:
> >Sorry to be pedestrian, but how about the OP's desire to convert
> >thread(s)
> >into posts/correspondence?
>
> But that was my point in mentioning a tree threaded mail reader,
> especially an open source one. It should be a matter of straightforward
> engineering to extract the part of tbird that makes a tree out of a thread.
> That code could be the launch point for a tool to do what we want.
>
> Determining whether a line prefixed with the quote char is intentionally
> quoted or detritus should be easy enough. If all remaining text after the
> nonquoted part is quoted, then it can be tossed. But if there is a quoted
> part followed by a nonquoted part, it should remain.
>
> I really think 80 to 90 % of what Nick wants exists.  But there's no
> incentive to do that work. And the amount of work to go from 80% to 100% is
> always large.
>
> --
> 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

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

[glen ep ropella]

On October 28, 2016 7:28:22 PM PDT, Owen Densmore  wrote:
>Sorry to be pedestrian, but how about the OP's desire to convert
>thread(s)
>into posts/correspondence?

But that was my point in mentioning a tree threaded mail reader, especially an 
open source one. It should be a matter of straightforward engineering to 
extract the part of tbird that makes a tree out of a thread. That code could be 
the launch point for a tool to do what we want.

Determining whether a line prefixed with the quote char is intentionally quoted 
or detritus should be easy enough. If all remaining text after the nonquoted 
part is quoted, then it can be tossed. But if there is a quoted part followed 
by a nonquoted part, it should remain.

I really think 80 to 90 % of what Nick wants exists.  But there's no incentive 
to do that work. And the amount of work to go from 80% to 100% is always large.

-- 
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

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

[Nick Thompson]

Marcus, 

 

I have great sympathy for the notion that there is too much writing and too 
much publication [and too little reading.]  I have often wondered how the 
academic world would be transformed if each of us were issued with our PhD one 
hundred blank pages with the understanding that that’s all we get in our 
career.  Furthermore, I wondered if promotion and tenure might be based not on 
the number of published articles but rather on the number of articles carefully 
read.  

 

But I also am impressed by the good things that happen when writers strive to 
archive  a coherent and comprehensive representation of their thought.   

 

All the best, 

 

Nick 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

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

 

From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2016 8:49 AM
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"

 

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  > on 
behalf of Nick Thompson  >
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 

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

[Steven A Smith]

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  on behalf of Nick Thompson 


*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 

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

[Owen Densmore]

I'm pretty sure the best a program could do is clean up and sequence the
conversation. There is definitely a man-in-the-middle .. this software
would augment your task but not complete it.

   -- Owen

On Fri, Oct 28, 2016 at 11:58 PM, Nick Thompson 
wrote:

> 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/
>
>
>
> *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  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 

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

[Marcus Daniels]

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  on behalf of Nick Thompson 

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/

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 
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 
> 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 

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

[Nick Thompson]

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/

 

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 
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  > 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", 

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

[Owen Densmore]

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  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)!
>
> 
>
> - 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?  

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

[Nick Thompson]

Glen, 

With a thread of any complexity it all, it becomes very tedious and tricky.  
However, you are right that just a few conventions observed by email writers 
could make it a lot easier.  Let's say you began every one of your messages 
with" BEGIN GLEN" (just above the header) and ended it with END 
GLEN.  A simple word macro could strip out all the quotations and we would be 
left with the bare messages.  Larding would be forbidden.  Now, I think a sort 
could reorder the messages in order of occurrence.  

Note the premise, tho.  We would have to get correspondents to start their 
message with those little bits of text.  I don't think even I would do it.  

Nick   

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/


-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of ?glen?
Sent: Friday, October 28, 2016 12:35 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"


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?


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe 
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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Re: [FRIAM] THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically"

[Steven A 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)!




- 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 
 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.

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

[Steven A Smith]

For the TL;DR crowd, a summary of my last response might be as simple as

   "I am wanting" == Idle Speculation

   "I want" == Statement of Intent


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 
 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

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

[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 
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:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
> Sent: Friday, October 28, 2016 4:11 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"
>
>
>
> 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
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 
>
> 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
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Re: [FRIAM] THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically"

[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:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Friday, October 28, 2016 4:11 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"

 

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

 

 

 

 



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

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

[Steven A 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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Re: [FRIAM] THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically"

[Steven A 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

<>

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

[Marcus Daniels]

<>

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

[glen ☣]

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

[┣glen┫]

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

[Marcus 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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Re: [FRIAM] THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically"

[┣glen┫]

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

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

[Marcus 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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Re: [FRIAM] THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically"

[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:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Owen Densmore
Sent: Thursday, October 27, 2016 10:33 AM
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"

 

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  > 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  > wrote:

Nick --

 

Look at https://storify.com/ 

 

-- rec --

 

On Wed, Oct 26, 2016 at 10:03 PM, Nick Thompson  > 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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Re: [FRIAM] THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically"

[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  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  wrote:
>
>> Nick --
>>
>> Look at https://storify.com/
>>
>> -- rec --
>>
>> On Wed, Oct 26, 2016 at 10:03 PM, Nick Thompson <
>> nickthomp...@earthlink.net> 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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Re: [FRIAM] THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically"

[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  wrote:

> Nick --
>
> Look at https://storify.com/
>
> -- rec --
>
> On Wed, Oct 26, 2016 at 10:03 PM, Nick Thompson <
> nickthomp...@earthlink.net> 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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Re: [FRIAM] THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically"

[Roger Critchlow]

Nick --

Look at https://storify.com/

-- rec --

On Wed, Oct 26, 2016 at 10:03 PM, Nick Thompson 
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:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Marcus
> Daniels
> *Sent:* Wednesday, October 26, 2016 9:11 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *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  on behalf of Owen Densmore <
> o...@backspaces.net>
> *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 
> 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  on behalf of Gillian Densmore <
> gil.densm...@gmail.com>
> *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 
> 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_0=256037
>
> Frank Wimberly
> Phone (505) 670-9918
>
>
>
> On Oct 26, 2016 7:33 PM, "Marcus Daniels"  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