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roachboy · 11-30-2007, 01:20 PM

most arguments that center on evaluations good/bad turn into meta-arguments soon enough--meta-arguments are about the criteria that shape arguments. it may not be particularly interesting to know that x find phenomenon 1 to be icky or interesting, but it can be interesting to find out WHY they think as they do.

the difficulty in getting interesting meta-arguments to happen is one of the many frustrations a messageboard brings with it. i think it follows from the medium itself (these little boxes) and from when and how they are used (e.g. if you steal time from your day gig to post stuff, you're probably going to be inclined to just state things. if you have a more amorphous schedule, then you might find this mode tiresome.) because a messageboard give you as a reader no idea at all of how folk use them and only shows the results of their usage, it flattens responses. sooner or later, you either adjust to this limitation or you stop playing.

in 3-d i tend to be quite interested in trying to figure out how other folk process information, how they think, why they operate as they do---which means that there is an extent to which i sometimes treat social interactions as little ethnographic experiments. i dont know if this is a good thing or not--but it's one of the outcomes of being a professional generator of abstractions, a kind of occupational hazard.

if you draw a box around these experiments and call it "research" then of course it acquires a degree of legitimacy--but if you do it while the person you are hanging out with over a beer in a publick house, the outcomes can go otherwise. and my grad school career demonstrated to me that calling drinking "research" is a kind problematic move.

anyway, i suppose the trick is to remember that people really like best situations in which they get to talk about themselves and are flattered by someone appearing to be interested and don't particularly care about why that interest might be there.

on the other hand, the only sense you really get of how you think that is not covered over with projections (because these pathways are your pathways and so are not present to you as pathways) is to bounce off other people. so all of this is probably reciprocal.
i like to pretend to myself that it is at any rate.
i work on the assumption that it is.
that way, i dont feel like an asshole.
i might in fact be an asshole, i just prefer to think that i am not one.
like anyone, i guess.

11-30-2007, 01:20 PM	#3 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	most arguments that center on evaluations good/bad turn into meta-arguments soon enough--meta-arguments are about the criteria that shape arguments. it may not be particularly interesting to know that x find phenomenon 1 to be icky or interesting, but it can be interesting to find out WHY they think as they do. the difficulty in getting interesting meta-arguments to happen is one of the many frustrations a messageboard brings with it. i think it follows from the medium itself (these little boxes) and from when and how they are used (e.g. if you steal time from your day gig to post stuff, you're probably going to be inclined to just state things. if you have a more amorphous schedule, then you might find this mode tiresome.) because a messageboard give you as a reader no idea at all of how folk use them and only shows the results of their usage, it flattens responses. sooner or later, you either adjust to this limitation or you stop playing. in 3-d i tend to be quite interested in trying to figure out how other folk process information, how they think, why they operate as they do---which means that there is an extent to which i sometimes treat social interactions as little ethnographic experiments. i dont know if this is a good thing or not--but it's one of the outcomes of being a professional generator of abstractions, a kind of occupational hazard. if you draw a box around these experiments and call it "research" then of course it acquires a degree of legitimacy--but if you do it while the person you are hanging out with over a beer in a publick house, the outcomes can go otherwise. and my grad school career demonstrated to me that calling drinking "research" is a kind problematic move. anyway, i suppose the trick is to remember that people really like best situations in which they get to talk about themselves and are flattered by someone appearing to be interested and don't particularly care about why that interest might be there. on the other hand, the only sense you really get of how you think that is not covered over with projections (because these pathways are your pathways and so are not present to you as pathways) is to bounce off other people. so all of this is probably reciprocal. i like to pretend to myself that it is at any rate. i work on the assumption that it is. that way, i dont feel like an asshole. i might in fact be an asshole, i just prefer to think that i am not one. like anyone, i guess. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 11-30-2007 at 01:22 PM..