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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!harvard!talcott!panda!teddy!lkk
From: lkk@teddy.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: wasting time
Message-ID: <1631@teddy.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 11-Nov-85 19:25:36 EST
Article-I.D.: teddy.1631
Posted: Mon Nov 11 19:25:36 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 13-Nov-85 04:40:35 EST
References: <917@cvl.UUCP> <352@whuts.UUCP> <11@ttidcc.UUCP> <2966@sun.uucp>
Reply-To: lkk@teddy.UUCP (Larry K. Kolodney)
Distribution: net
Organization: GenRad, Inc., Concord, Mass.
Lines: 50

In article <2966@sun.uucp> chuq@sun.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) writes:
>In article <11@ttidcc.UUCP> hollombe@ttidcc.UUCP (The Polymath) writes:
>>Electronic communication isn't real?  You mean  there  aren't  real  people
>>reading this stuff?  It's just an AI experiment?  Perhaps you don't believe
>>in telephones, either? (-:
>
>Well, I definitely agree with Jerry's sentiments, but it really needs to go
>a step farther. Just because you can't write things that live doesn't mean
>others can't. I've carried on a number of 'relationships' or continuing
>correspondences across this net that would blow away your average party
>banter, or even your better than average party banter, for that matter. 
>
>If YOU can't do
>it, it is because you aren't good enough with your chosen language -- don't
>blame the medium, blame the messenger (try writing your love letters in C?
>naaaahhhhhhhh)


I've done it Chuq.  I've gotten very powerful emotional responses out
of people thru letter writing.  That's not the issue.  I might get a
tremendous emotional reaction out of a novel, but I wouldn't claim to
"know" the author as a result.  As I've said before, "knowing" somebody
requires so much more than knowing about what they have to say to you, it
requires seeing them in action, when they aren't making a "presentation."

>    I wish people would learn to stop generalizing their own weaknesses
>    onto the entire society of people they deal with.

This has nothing do to with personal weaknesses.  It has to do with
the way that human emotions function.  The fact of the matter is that
there are many many inputs that we get from people subconsciously
which shape our feelings toward them.  Those cannot, by their very
nature, be purposefully transmitted over a network.


I have met people, I'll admit, whose emotional life is quite
atrophied, and who live almost entirely in the world of cold rational
analysis.  For them, falling in love would entail finding someone
whose philisophical system coincided with theirs.  I guess for them,
the visceral emotional factor is relatively unimportant.  For these
people, the net is probably the ideal way to meet someone.  It allows
you to avoid all that messy emotional stuff, and get down to what's
really important, whether she is a hegelian materialist or a Millian
utilitarian.  
-- 
Sport Death,       (USENET) ...{decvax | ihnp4!mit-eddie}!genrad!panda!lkk
Larry Kolodney     (INTERNET) lkk@mit-mc.arpa
--------
Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
- Helen Keller