Re: From Knowledge Animals to Information Beings

Onar Aam (onar@HSR.NO)
Tue, 23 May 1995 06:12:33 +0100


>You are truly amazing!

Thanks!

> You try to deal with my comments by slandering me

Squeeze me? I think we have a slight communication problem. I never intended to
slander you, and I believe I explicitly stated that. I think it is cherishable
and noble to heartfully defend one's goals and ideals, especially in the name of

truth and communication. I've noted that you are conservative. That is, you wish

to preserve a state of uniformity in which communication can take place.
Personally I tend to lean towards the turbulent. Now, I believe that if you push

the conservative approach to its extreme you get linguistic stalinism because
language and trails of thought are closely connected. If however, you push the
turbulent approach too far you get a state of havoc -- non-communication.
Neither of these are good. However, as someone neatly termed it, when both
approaches are pulling simultaniously in each their directions you get socalled
"creative tension" which in my opinion is healthy turbulence. In this way you
conserve enough of a common language to sustain communication while at the same
time manage to evolve communication. If it's slandering to point this out then
you and I have different definitions of slandering. I was also hoping you would
catch the sense of self-irony in my last posting. 1-0 to non-communication, I'm
afraid.

>>I've
>> adopted the concept of the magic mirror and is now one of the foundation
>> concepts of my joint theory of psychology, sociology and human evolution.
>>
>Yes, I use it in an undergraduate honors course on complexity. As a text
>I use Peat and Briggs "Turbulent Mirror" which is chock full of Allice,
>Ancient Chinese philosophy and modern complexity theory.

In my theoretical framework the magic mirror is the interface between the mind
and other minds (society) through which communication flows. Hence "turbulent
mirroring" would in my model be an image of non-communication. Why do I get the
nagging feeling that we are caught in an accute irony-field spanned by the
interpenetrating embodiment of non-communication in spacetime? I bet it is
laughing at us both.

Onar.