Re: Set up LiveJournal community?

On Sat, 25 Mar 2006 15:18:38 +0000, Jonathan L Cunningham wrote:

Mary K. Kuhner <mkkuhner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <1hcmnx1.1nnu18c1h887wgN%spam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Jonathan L Cunningham <spam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I wonder to what extent you were extrapolating, and to what extent there
was a genuine, albeit indirect, conversation going on. And to what
extent your "I knew these folks" reflects the kind of knowledge you are
interested in acquiring, rather than the kind I'm interested in.

I'm still fuzzy on what kind of knowledge you are interested in
acquiring. What I ended up knowing was how these people would
respond to stress, and something about what to do about it. That's
pretty central to me. Also a good deal about what was important to
them in their lives.
(snip)

It's possible I'm being entirely too pessimistic about how much it is
possible to glean from a LJ.

I can't tell, since I still don't know what you want to know. What
would you want to find out about me (or anyone) in person? "What
face did you have before you were born" type questions baffle me--
I can't answer that about myself let alone anyone else.

[This reply is a bit long and rambling, 'cos I'm sort of thinking out
loud.]

It's puzzling. And that's why, for me, it's very much on-topic for
this group. If I could figure out what it is I'm thinking, I maybe
could do it better in writing.

I've become convinced that it's some kind of non-verbal knowing (I
know that some of my thinking is non-verbal) -- and that is also
why I started out so convinced that it wouldn't be revealed simply
in a LJ. OTOH, there are non-verbal things going on in a piece of
writing, sort of, and LJs are more interactive in a community of
people who read each other's LJs. So I might be willing to have a
rethink on that point.

I do know that I used to be much more oblivious to social interactions
when I was younger (i.e. typical "male" pattern -- not exactly heading
for Asperger's territory, but lacking an instinctive interpretation of
the merest eyebrow twitch, which some people manage) -- and that a lot
of my perception now has been learnt semi-intellectually (i.e. by
compensating) but for so long that it has become habit: what is meant
by the phrase "second nature".

Coming back to your question: I also lack the vocabulary to describe
scents and flavours. In what way do apricots smell differently to
oranges? That's an analogy for how you might differ in RL from how
I imagine you from your posts here: what does your psyche "feel" or
"smell" (or sound?) like? I'm not talking synasthesia here, I don't
mean that your "mind" or "soul" or "personality" really has a feel
or a smell or a sound -- and texture would also be a metaphor. But it
has *some* properties.

And that is not, to me, as meaningless as your "what face did you
have before you were born?" example, which (to me) is a silly question.

Afterthought: perhaps what it is, is that there are still some
differences between people left over, unaccounted for, after all the
"fact-like" differences are accounted for, and after I've extracted
as many nuances (semi-unconsciously) as I can from a piece of writing.

Everyone has a nose, eyes, cheekbones, mouth, lips etc. but not everyone
has the *same* nose, eyes etc. That's how it's possible to recognise
faces, but most people are very poor at describing the differences in
words (except for gross differences which are not really enough to
identify someone uniquely).

And "what someone is like" is more important than the shape of their
face, even if I can't easily describe "what they are like" in words.

I think that, for people who always recognised these things
instinctively, they're unaware of what cues (or clues) they are using.
What I don't know is whether they somehow extract those cues from LJ
entries, or (because the process is first nature, not second nature)
are unaware of their absence and automatically interpolated. If people
were as you expected them to be, it suggests the former rather than the
latter.

Jonathan

In other words, you are drawing a distinction between "know" and
"recognize".

I think what you may be groping for is a predictive ability. If you know
someone, to some degree you can predict their behavior. From there,
progress to whether or not the predicted behaviors comport with our own
opinions and prejudices; whether or not we two are compatible. The more
nearly we agree, the more comfortable we are with the other, and the more
we can learn, which allows us to predict in more detail. (It follows that
we will know people we like better than we know people we don't like, all
things considered, but that's a second-order effect.)

We won't predict perfectly -- we can't do that for ourselves, let alone
another, independent individual -- but we can get comfortable with being
able to do so in the gross. When we do, we know the person, eh? A LJ or
other text-mode interaction can contribute to the necessary knowledge
(perhaps "familiarity" is better). Being faceless text it won't give
information about physical appearance, tics, preferred dress, and the other
sorts of things that require face-to-face knowledge, but it could give a
lot of data about prejudices, thought patterns, habits, and the like. Not
complete, but going a long way in the right direction.

Regards,
Ric
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