Re: virus: Omnipresent Radio Station.
Tony Hindle (t.hindle@joney.demon.co.uk)
Mon, 14 Apr 1997 23:43:14 +0100
In message <JkRCZPA5rgUzEw3R@martz.demon.co.uk>, Martz
<martz@martz.demon.co.uk> writes
> I assume that the semantic distance between what you're
>trying to communicate and what I'm actually interpreting it as is
>sufficiently small that we can, with a little effort, understand each
>other well enough.
Absolutely.
> It doesn't take much imagination to picture a
>situation where that might not hold[1], even with the premise that we
>are in fact both speaking the same language.
> What if we are actually
>speaking two completely different languages but they both are
>sufficiently similar in construct that they can be mistaken for each
>other? That may sound an extreme circumstance but I would argue that
>from a certain perspective that is exactly the case (see a thread from a
>couple of months ago, I think between myself and Alex - maybe one of the
>Rationality offshoots).
I remember first meeting you during a conversation with Alex,
where is (s)he btw, I still have a beautiful sig. file that I lifted
from one of Alex' posts . I cant recall the example you speak of but I
know of many circumstances where I've been involved in such
misunderstandings.
All this makes me reflect again that our earlier conversations
served to biuld a mutual understanding which helps our fluency of
communications now, we need less feedback/clarification.
BTW I have finally caught up and I sent Corey some early
thoughts on the http://www.hempbc.com/magazine/apr95/smoke_in_my_i.html
article. I dont know how to CC people yet but I asked Corey to. Actually
I think this forum is the place for such a discussion.
>
>>Perhaps so. But the way I see it is that
>>when our minds reach the edge of understanding for a given field of
>>inquiry, they are able to postulate guesses and ways of testing them.
>>Science always trys to guess one of two mutually exclusive possibilities
>>and so the results of the testing will always move us further
>>foreward/upward by a finite amount.
>
>That's the way I see it too. But just try proving it.
Point taken, its impossible to prove (although I can't prove
that either =-)
Tony Hindle. I found this message in a bottle....
I suppose I really feel `every man is an island,' and that we're all
lobbing badly worded messages in fragile bottles into the sea, hoping
our knowledge of a language we just learned, the fragility of the
paper, and the motion of nearby currents will take the message to the
people we want and that they'll be lucky enough to read it as we
intended. Perhaps a bit depressing, but I read Lovecraft as a
child. :) ....Alex williams