Comments on: Truth & Paradox

By: Ted Heistman

Ted Heistman — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 04:49:51 +0000

Casey,

Feel free to stop by blog!

Ted

By: Aaron

Aaron — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 20:51:58 +0000

Casemeau! Where’d you go? I got back from my time in the housebus and you’d completely dissapeared. No one had a clue where you were apart from a cryptic comment on Frank Black’s blog. Actually where the heck has Frank gone too?.

Nice to hear from you anyway. Your comment reminds me of issues of spiritual faith – it’s how people should handle their faith but I literally only know one person who does it that way.

>>When someone is only pretending, it’s absurdly obvious, and there’s no use in continuing the engagement.<<<

I’m not sure if that was meant to be relevant to my kerfuffle with Jason but I have reached the point where I can see there is no point in continuuing.

By: casemeau

casemeau — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 18:55:21 +0000

My strongest beliefs are not the ones which I protect or defend most stridently, but are instead those which I leave open to attack by competing beliefs and which survive again and again, with no help from me.

The key is to truly leave them open to attack, rather than pretending. When someone is only pretending, it’s absurdly obvious, and there’s no use in continuing the engagement.

casemeau (Yup. It’s me.)

By: Ted Heistman

Ted Heistman — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 13:28:14 +0000

Aaron,
I wouldn’t call that an attack, or “picking a fight” anyone that has chatted with you online,even a little bit, should know you are a peacemaker.

This is more like straight talk you give to a friend. I sense that is how it was intended but not how it was taken. That’s not your fault.

Ted

By: The Anthropik Network » Truth & Paradox

The Anthropik Network » Truth & Paradox — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 01:28:03 +0000

[...] recently, Aaron at Village Blog wrote a fairly hurtful post aimed at attacking me personally, from which I’ve taken the title for this post, where he [...]

By: Aaron

Aaron — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 21:48:28 +0000

You’re right about the limitations of text based communication, people behave like they do when they’re behind the wheel of a car. I’m probably more hopeful than most because I don’t get trolls very often – unless you count Jason turning up and wanting to argue like he used to do here :-)

The sad thing is that in real life it’s usually no better.

By: Devin

Devin — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 11:49:11 +0000

I’d love to see a collaborative effort to “get to the heart of it” as it were, but I’m afraid the internet is far more conducive to Jason’s style of communication than what you hope for. I think if Ran made a place for public commentary and discussion the tenor of the site would change radically.

Also, in my experience with forums and discussion blogs, without perpetual debate and conflict very little gets said at all. If people agree and want to stop talking, they can’t exactly go hang out or anything. It’s an inherent limitation of text-only communication, that’s all.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 03:07:19 +0000

Aaron wrote:

“…the proponent of an idea is the person in the best place to be critiquing it – after all, who else knows it so well.”

Joel wrote

“In my experience, this just isn’t so.”

That’s exactly what I mean, everyone is so concerned about defending their ideas that it’s inconceivable that they would do anything else. Like I said, I’ve only ever seen Ran do it.

I know there is nothing new under the sun but the debates we are having in this circle of blogs seem to be new to the people involved. I don’t know anyone who’s been all the way through the sort of crash we’re expecting. It’s all guess work so the sort of tight knit collaborative group you describe is really what we need – not duels.

By: Joel

Joel — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 02:47:51 +0000

“…the proponent of an idea is the person in the best place to be critiquing it – after all, who else knows it so well.”

In my experience, this just isn’t so.

For one thing, there are few new ideas. “Who else knows it so well?” Why, someone who’s been all the way through it, rather than stopping in the middle of it. That is, people who’ve been failed by the idea, and figured out why it failed them.

Also, many ideas have a complexity to them that requires multiple perspectives for a full understanding. True, useful ideas are particularly likely to have this quality; you seem to have noticed this in this essay, and called it “paradox”, which is as good a name as any.

A healthy research group allows a small, tight-knit group to collaborate in preparing an idea before it is presented to the larger, more competitive community. I think this balance of cooperation and competition can be immensely powerful. However, healthy research groups aren’t nearly as common as they should be, and I agree with you that the process is all-too-often destructive.