Re: Statements against new.net?
At 3/14/01 07:56 AM, Vadim Antonov wrote:
That is based on the assumption that consistency is necessary or desireable :) Of course, it is dear to an engineer's mind, but the case from the sociological point of view is far from clear-cut. In fact, way too many woes of human societies can be (at least indirectly) attributed to the misguided attempts to enforce consistency.
This assumption is explicitly addressed in the RFC - I quote: ------ 1.1. Maintenance of a Common Symbol Set Effective communications between two parties requires two essential preconditions: - The existence of a common symbol set, and - The existence of a common semantic interpretation of these symbols. Failure to meet the first condition implies a failure to communicate at all, while failure to meet the second implies that the meaning of the communication is lost. In the case of a public communications system this condition of a common symbol set with a common semantic interpretation must be further strengthened to that of a unique symbol set with a unique semantic interpretation. This condition of uniqueness allows any party to initiate a communication that can be received and understood by any other party. Such a condition rules out the ability to define a symbol within some bounded context. In such a case, once the communication moves out of the context of interpretation in which it was defined, the meaning of the symbol becomes lost. ------
Of course, one may choose to treat RFC as a gospel, but to me (and i hope to anyone interested in how cognition works to the point of actually getting acquainted with the relevant research) the attached passage sounds quite like a bunch of random noise :) Mostly because it assumes that human-to-human communication is a reasoned process, concerned with consistent intepretation. In fact, most of what makes, for example, art interesting is that it does not have a singular, well defined interpretation. --vadim PS This one, i guess, is brought to you by the Society Against De-Humanization Of Internet Users <tongue firmly in cheek> PPS Yes, I think any form which _restricts_ potential models of communication is bad. Such as forcing communications to be moderated by a singular hierarchical structure. This whole thread won't be there in the first place if the scheme actually worked well in the real world. Hierarchies do not scale and cannot adequately tolerate internalized adversity. On Wed, 14 Mar 2001, Geoff Huston wrote:
At 3/14/01 07:56 AM, Vadim Antonov wrote:
That is based on the assumption that consistency is necessary or desireable :) Of course, it is dear to an engineer's mind, but the case from the sociological point of view is far from clear-cut. In fact, way too many woes of human societies can be (at least indirectly) attributed to the misguided attempts to enforce consistency.
This assumption is explicitly addressed in the RFC - I quote:
------ 1.1. Maintenance of a Common Symbol Set
Effective communications between two parties requires two essential preconditions:
- The existence of a common symbol set, and
- The existence of a common semantic interpretation of these symbols. Failure to meet the first condition implies a failure to communicate at all, while failure to meet the second implies that the meaning of the communication is lost.
In the case of a public communications system this condition of a common symbol set with a common semantic interpretation must be further strengthened to that of a unique symbol set with a unique semantic interpretation. This condition of uniqueness allows any party to initiate a communication that can be received and understood by any other party. Such a condition rules out the ability to define a symbol within some bounded context. In such a case, once the communication moves out of the context of interpretation in which it was defined, the meaning of the symbol becomes lost.
participants (2)
-
Geoff Huston -
Vadim Antonov