The Human Sciences, without *denial*
Jorn Barger
notorious) to sci.cognitive where I've never posted before, trying to
sow some seeds for a new paradigm in the human sciences, which seem to me
to be gravely lacking in *human* qualities...]
In article <3mgqb1$5...@venus.mcs.com>, I wrote:
>So I'd like to propose that what we're running up against here is at
>least superficially like the Uncertainty Principle, or the 'event
>horizon' in black holes, but in this case it's a "self-knowledge
>horizon" that's defended not by natural law, but by a social structure
>of *denial* that strongly resists every attempt to make a clear
>statement of the human predicament...
This idea of a 'horizon' of self-knowledge is basically the same as
Freud's idea of the unconscious: humans are afraid to look deeply into
their own motivations and desires, because these never entirely fit the
prevailing social standards. So there's always a degree of denial, and
this prevents the sort of detached observation that true psychological
science must require.
And one place where this is most painfully evident is in *AI*, where
almost every approach-- natural language, planning, expert systems,
distributed processing-- has been stymied by the lack of a rigorous
*representation* of the generalized human experience. Without this,
a.i. programs are doomed to remain useless miniature demos that don't
*scale up*. (This message is also crossposted to comp.ai.games, because
it's the gamers who have to confront this question most directly.)
So I'm proposing a new approach to 'inventorying' the human experience,
which would take as a startingpoint the enormous knowledgebase of
observations compiled by the *novelists*, for whom realism necessarily
requires a continual accumulation of convincing details. The classic
tradition in novel-writing is an epic of *writers confronting the
horizons of their self-knowledge*, and I believe the major form of
denial that's blocking progress in the human sciences is their refusal
to acknowledge literary approaches to observation.
Scientific method, of course, requires that observation be followed by
analysis and hypothesis generation, so I propose that the natural next
step is to sort these 'literary' observations into some well-ordered
structure, that may correspond to an (entirely new) arrangement for
the psychology textbook of the future.
One plausible orthogonal dimension in psychology is *motivation*.
Starting with a simple list of motives like Maslow's, one might try to
write a chapter for each one, sketching the overall shape of the human
behaviors each implies. (But don't *start* by getting hung up in making
this list complete or even consistent.) Try: hunger, safety, sex,
affection, family, esteem, entertainment, expression. Refinements can
come later...
For each of these, you then inventory its characteristic *common-sense*
behaviors (noting those areas where you feel least comfortable-- ie,
objective-- and where your own anxieties are triggered). Picture these,
too, as the atoms of behavior from which a computer simulation might be
built:
Hunger: growing food, acquiring food, feeling hunger, specificity of
hungers, preparing food, consuming, excreting, fasting, starving,
desperate action, overeating, food-poisoning
Safety: feeling endangered, establishing and maintaining relationships
with protectors, establishing and maintaining barriers to attackers
(walls, distance), mounting counterthreats, fighting off attacks,
repairing damage, neurotic anxiety
Sex: establishing and maintaining relationships with sex partners,
jealousy and faithfulness, feeling desire, engaging partner, solitary
sex, coerced sex, paid sex, taboo desires, guilt
Affection: establishing and maintaining affectionate relationships,
expressions of disaffection, conciliation, manipulated affection
Family: supportiveness, competition, family and affection, leaving the
nest, abandonment, bereavement
Esteem: practice, execution and critique, attack and praise, vanity, low
self-esteem, coerced esteem, craving attention, showing off, bragging
Entertainment: boredom, risk-taking, play, story-telling, spectacles,
contests, travel, music, preferences among entertainments
Expression: the craving to communicate, media, shaping an expression,
self-criticism and revision, publication, performance, expression and
esteem
In 1987, as a test of this approach, I undertook an intensive analysis
of "human romantic behavior", from loneliness to search to infatuation
and courtship, rejection or acceptance, marriage, relationship, trials
and breakdown, bereavement, and renewal. My primary literary sources
were anthologies of love poetry, which I considered to be as challenging
a data-set as any! The resulting 'textbook' includes several thousand
quotes sorted into some 500 subcategories.
The next step should have been to turn this analysis into a hypothesis,
*in the form of a computer simulation* of humans falling in love. I'm
finding, though, that I need a simple, *general* simulation of creatures-
surviving-in-societies... so this is where things currently stand.
I have a mailinglist for anyone interested in compiling a general
knowledgebase for use in interactive fictions (etc), called wisdom-faq
or wisdom. Email me to subscribe.
I also have a WWWeb site that presents many related perspectives at
<URL: http://www.mcs.net/~jorn/ > and an ftp site at ftp.mcs.net in
/mcsnet.users/jorn/ [the wisdom-list archives are in subdirectory
wisdom]
SubGenius
: And one place where this is most painfully evident is in *AI*, where
: almost every approach-- natural language, planning, expert systems,
: distributed processing-- has been stymied by the lack of a rigorous
: *representation* of the generalized human experience. Without this,
: a.i. programs are doomed to remain useless miniature demos that don't
: *scale up*. (This message is also crossposted to comp.ai.games, because
: it's the gamers who have to confront this question most directly.)
+---------------------------------------SubG------------------------------+
I see the problem. You want human simulators rather than artificial
intelligence. Or are you suggesting that `human' and `intelligent'
are somehow necessarily synonymous?
+---------------------------------------SubG------------------------------+
: So I'm proposing a new approach to 'inventorying' the human experience,
: which would take as a startingpoint the enormous knowledgebase of
: observations compiled by the *novelists*, for whom realism necessarily
: requires a continual accumulation of convincing details. The classic
: tradition in novel-writing is an epic of *writers confronting the
: horizons of their self-knowledge*, and I believe the major form of
: denial that's blocking progress in the human sciences is their refusal
: to acknowledge literary approaches to observation.
[`heuristics are the way to go' deleted]
+---------------------------------------SubG------------------------------+
More specifically, to acknowledge Mr Barger's literary approaches to
observation.
What leads you to the above conclusions, namely that realism is
a concern of novelists in general (or maybe the notation `*novelists*'
refers to a specific subset for which this is true), why `realism
necessarily requires...details, and that the `classic tradition' (whatever
that means) is and `epic' of confrontation of self-knowledge?
Yours etc.,
SubGenius
David 'Azure' Leland
[...]
: So I'm proposing a new approach to 'inventorying' the human experience,
: which would take as a startingpoint the enormous knowledgebase of
: observations compiled by the *novelists*, for whom realism necessarily
: requires a continual accumulation of convincing details. The classic
: tradition in novel-writing is an epic of *writers confronting the
: horizons of their self-knowledge*, and I believe the major form of
: denial that's blocking progress in the human sciences is their refusal
: to acknowledge literary approaches to observation.
[...]
This sounds like an interesting experiment, and if you're willing
to put the insane amount of work necessary into it, I think many of us will
be interested in the outcome. I don't think it can work, though, and
while I don't mean to be pessimistic to the point of saying "Don't even
try.", I think your approach is not very different from the old AI notion
of coding in reams of information about human nature and experience in
the form of propositional statments. You propose to use novelists'
expressions, but still novelists are not perfect, and do not necessarily
reflect humanity in its "true" form (whatever that means exactly). In
fact, I would expect your AI to under ideal circumstances be a perfect
simulation of a fictional character (complete with exaggerated traits
that suit dramatic purpose). The only pragmatic way to get an AI to
resemble _human_ intelligence, IMO, is to model it after the early
developing human brain and put it in a context as close to that of a
normal human's so as to provide all of the appropriate "input."
Not a flame, but just my opinion on the matter. Feel free to
further argue the validity of you method and/or the invalidity of the one
I mentioned. Take care! :)
--
--Azure
a.k.a. David Leland
v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v
Jorn Barger
>: So I'm proposing a new approach to 'inventorying' the human experience,
> This sounds like an interesting experiment, and if you're willing
>to put the insane amount of work necessary into it, I think many of us will
>be interested in the outcome.
One of the nice features of this approach is that, for lots of people,
close reading of great novels is *fun*! And the payoffs start with the
first novel analysed-- you don't have to do a thousand before you get
interesting results...
> I don't think it can work, though, and
>while I don't mean to be pessimistic to the point of saying "Don't even
>try.", I think your approach is not very different from the old AI notion
>of coding in reams of information about human nature and experience in
>the form of propositional statments.
Absolutely true-- that notion is still vitally alive, though, in
Doug Lenat's Cyc project See the CycFAQ on comp.ai or at
<URL: http://www.mcs.net/~jorn/html/ai/cycfaq.html >
But his propositions tend to be about more-specialized forms of behavior
like medicine-and-healing...
> You propose to use novelists'
>expressions, but still novelists are not perfect, and do not necessarily
>reflect humanity in its "true" form (whatever that means exactly). In
>fact, I would expect your AI to under ideal circumstances be a perfect
>simulation of a fictional character (complete with exaggerated traits
>that suit dramatic purpose).
This would be a terrific advance, and make further refinements much
easier! Also, careful selection of which novellists to begin with
will make a great difference. I'd recommend James Joyce for
scrupulous accuracy, or Iris Murdoch for clarity and range. (See
below for some leads on other novellists.)
> The only pragmatic way to get an AI to
>resemble _human_ intelligence, IMO, is to model it after the early
>developing human brain and put it in a context as close to that of a
>normal human's so as to provide all of the appropriate "input."
But we don't have any great novels of early development! ;^/
Seriously, I think understanding development is a much harder task,
because we have so little access to the subjective content, and
must wait until the basic grown-up simulation is well along...
> Not a flame, but just my opinion on the matter.
No flames taken-- I'm very grateful for your broadmindedness!
Here's some novels (etc) I recommend to people who want to
venture into the psychological aspects, and still enjoy themselves
immensely). See rec.arts.books for a fuller version of this list,
or <URL: http://www.mcs.net/~jorn/html/favorites.html > or
ftp.mcs.net in /mcsnet.users/jorn/favorites.txt .
-- Books I recommend to almost everyone ----------------------
"Operators and Things" by Barbara O'Brien. Though this is
nonfiction-- a story of a woman's stress-induced schizoid break-- it's
still the strangest revision of ordinary reality ever depicted.
Robert Stone, "Dog Soldiers". An absolutely harrowing and deep
philosophical thriller, about heroin smuggling in early-70s
California. Stone's "Outerbridge Reach" is much less painful; see
also "GradLevel Lit.", below.
Thomas Pynchon, "The Crying of Lot 49". A really enjoyable short
novel that's also incredibly rich in ideas. "Vineland" is readable
but comparatively dull.
"Speedboat" by Renata Adler. A delightful stylistic experiment,
fiction, easy to read. Her "Pitch Dark" disappointed me, though.
Iris Murdoch, "A Word Child" etc. Our greatest psychological
novelist's finest novel is a stunning tragi-comedy. *Everything* else
by her is good, too: "The Nice and the Good", "The Black Prince",
"Flight from the Enchanter", etc... (30+ all told, I believe)
Vladimir Nabokov, "Pnin". This is the simplest, most humane work by a
fiendishly good writer (see GradLevel). "Transparent Things" is also
fairly simple.
Martin Amis, "London Fields". Nabokov with rabies! This title is
cruel but delicious, as are "Other People", "Money", and "Success".
Robert Anton Wilson, "The Earth Will Shake" etc. A fine
historical-philosophical adventure tale, the start of a hopefully-long
series. All his novels are enjoyable, mixing sex and mysticism with
good storytelling. (I don't recommend this one to the faint-hearted.)
Colin Wilson, "Ritual in the Dark" etc. Like RAW, CW is a fine writer
interested in mysticism, philosophy, crime and the occult. His early
novels are highclass, the later ones are fun, but semi-junky.
Blanche McCrary Boyd, "Mourning the Death of Magic". Good, honest
60s-counterculture coming-of-age fiction. Her others are also good.
"Lucky Jim" by Kingsley Amis. Appallingly funny, especially for grad
students. His others are a mixed lot, mostly readable.
Walker Percy, "Love in the Ruins". A lovely lyrical modern Southern
dystopian scifi philosophical romance. "The Moviegoer" and "The Last
Gentleman" are similarly enjoyable.
Leo Tolstoy, "Anna Karenin". The last century's great psychological
novelist. "War and Peace" is also phenomenal and gripping.
Tom Wolfe, "Bonfire of the Vanities". Why do people attack this?!?!?
The most accessible sociological novel of the 80s.
William Wharton, "Dad". A heartbreaking tale of a grown son's
caretaking his dying father. WW's other novels are all enjoyable.
-- Genre-crossover successes/ Recreational reading ------------
Colin Wilson (occult, scifi, crime) See above.
Peter Dickinson (mysteries, childrens) A *great* writer.
George V. Higgins (crime, politics) Avoid "Dreamland"
Elmore Leonard (crime)
Scott Turow (legal) A humane guy.
Ward Just (politics)
Graham Greene (politics, espionage) Not the 'entertainments'
John LeCarre (espionage) A class act, grad-level spy fiction!
Jorn Barger
<URL: http://www.mcs.net/~jorn/html/favorites.html > if you know any...
=====
What I value most is literature that offers enduring *images to think
with*. These have withstood the test of time in that regard. What's
more, their style achieves a level of gracefulness that makes them
pleasant to read.
-- 'Graduate level' fiction ----------------------------------
James Joyce, "Ulysses". This is really a book to reread, over a
lifetime. Its riches are *bottomless*. Start, at least, with the
first six chapters. (After that, they mostly get harder and harder.)
You might read "A Portrait of the Artist" first, to get up to speed.
"Dubliners" is deceptively simple and dry by comparison.
Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow". If you liked "Lot 49", this is
more of the same, plus a ton of really great prose. Pynchon's "V." is
not indispensible, imho, but it's got its pleasures.
Joseph McElroy, "Lookout Cartridge" etc. An *amazing* stylist, who at
his best is on a par with Wallace Stevens. "Ancient History" is
another favorite of mine. "Plus" is more difficult. "Women and Men"
I haven't gotten thru yet.
Nabokov, "Lolita", "Pale Fire", etc. These are rough going, but
exquisite. Everything he wrote is very fine, subtle, witty, deep.
Robert Stone, "A Flag for Sunrise". The most depressing novel ever
written... I hope! Central American inhumanity. His "Hall of
Mirrors" and "Children of Light" are interesting failures, imho.
Harold Brodkey, "Collected Stories", "First Love and Other Stories".
An amazing stylist, an american Proust. His latest "Runaway Soul" I
haven't managed to read, though.
Marcel Proust, "Swann in Love". This excerpt is all I've read of
Proust, but it's highly admirable.
Gustave Flaubert, "Madame Bovary". *Much* better than his
"Sentimental Education" (no matter what Woody Allen thinks ;^)
Wallace Stevens, "The Palm at the End of the Mind". This collection
of his poems is the one I recommend. I don't 'get' his long works,
but his short ones are just the best, ever. (I also favor Shakespeare's
Sonnets, and Edna Millay...)
Melville, "Moby Dick". Powerful.
-- Science grad-level ---------------------------------------------
"The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"
by Julian Jaynes. A crazy hypothesis about early humankind hearing
the voices of gods, after the fashion of Giambattista Vico.
"Man's Place in Nature" by C.F. Hockett. A truly original
anthropology text, that tries to draw some *real* generalizations (as
opposed to phony pompous ones ;^/
Richard Dawkins, "The Selfish Gene". If you want to speculate about
the human predicament, you have to come to terms with sociobiology.
Frans de Waals, "Chimpanzee Politics". Observations of a chimp colony
lead the zookeeper to speculate whether human politics is fundamentally
about sexual dominance...!
Feynmann's "QED". Who knows what quantum mechanics means? Feynmann,
as much as anybody. This book is *readable*, as hard science should
be but rarely is.
Nick Herbert, "Quantum Reality". More QM, lucidly popularized.
Jearl Walker, "The Flying Circus of Physics". A compilation of
strange-but-true physical phenomena, with as good explanations as were
known at the time.
-- Non-fiction grad-level ------------------------------------------
"James Joyce" by Richard Ellmann. Joyce was a master. His life story
is enlightening and inspiring. This book redefined modern biography.
Nabokov, "Strong Opinions". VN on literary theory and practice. No
bull!
Kate Bush, "Cloudbusting" edited by Ron Hill. A fan's etext compilation
of all the published interviews by one of the most insightful artists of
our era. See ftp.uu.net in usenet/rec.music.gaffa/
"The Unauthorized Version" by Robin Lane Fox. A most credible
historical examination of that most incredible book-- the Bible.
Robert Graves and Raphael Patai, "Hebrew Myths". The book of Genesis
compared to other myths of the era. See below for more on Graves--
his historical novels (eg "I, Claudius") are quite readable.
Elaine Pagels, "Adam, Eve, and the Serpent". Along with her "Gnostic
Gospels", a very interesting view of Judeo-Christian origins.
Velikovsky's histories. I don't care about his nutty astrophysics--
his re-calibration of Egyptian chronology is fascinating even if it's
false. Start with "Oedipus and Akhnaten", probably.
"Who Will Tell the People?" by William Greider. I don't know the
field very well, but this book seems unflinching in painting the
sordid truths behind US politics.
McCluhan, "The Gutenberg Galaxy". An unbelievably well-researched
argument that the invention of printing transformed our perception of
*authority*. (Cf. Jaynes) This work opened my eyes to Finnegans Wake.
-- Mysticism/philosophy grad-level ---------------------------------
"The Black Goddess and the Unseen Real" by Peter Redgrove, aka "TBG
and the Sixth Sense". Building a new sort of bridge between science
and mysticism, Redgrove is Graves's literary heir.
Stephen Gaskin, "Haight-Ashbury Flashbacks" etc. Stephen makes less
sense to non-drug-users, but the rest of us should appreciate his
subtle observations on what 'altered states' reveal about our social
predicament. The operative concept is *psychic energy*.
J. Krishnamurti, "Commentaries on Living" etc. A beautiful pure
vision of *life without denial*.
Whitman, "Leaves of Grass". Another vision of life without denial.
William Blake's prose works-- proverbs, annotations, etc. His short
poems are too simple, his long ones too obscure, but his proverbs are
nonpareil.
Anonymous, The Gospels. The guy *did* speak with a note of authority...
-- Post Grad -------------------------------------------------------
G. Spencer Brown, "Laws of Form". A psychedelic breakthrough in
symbolic logic, opening a whole new way of looking at to symbol systems.
Joyce, "Finnegans Wake". The answer to all the riddles of the
universe, if we could only read it!
Phillip Herring, "Joyce's Ulysses Notesheets in the British Museum".
If the key to FW is in Ulysses, then the key to Ulysses must be in this
transcription of Joyce's surviving *notes* for that book.
Robert Graves, "The White Goddess". Strange, obscure, wonderful. Try
his other prose, poetry, and historical fiction, too.
Giambattista Vico, "New Science". Strange, obscure, wonderful. An
early 18th century approach to social science.
Jorn Barger
discussion of the AI-problem of putting virtual personalities into
these worlds, to make them *interesting* and emotionally involving...
I've been trying to make the case that *literature* might turn out to
play an important role in this quest, because it offers a substantial
body of careful observations of human behavior, which we may try to
'reverse engineer' into a computer simulation...
It's occurred to me that one effective way to dramatise this approach
is to propose a particular work of fiction, and literary character,
as the best suited to play this role of 'virtual Adam'-- so my vote
goes to James Joyce's "Ulysses", and its central character Leopold
Bloom, as the most meticulously documented human in literature!
Although Ulysses depicts only a single day in Bloom's life, it gives
us a running account of his 'stream of consciousness' during much of
that day, and from within this stream it's been possible to
reconstruct a great deal of his life story (see Raleigh's "Chronicle
of Leopold and Molly Bloom").
In fact, it's become a cliche in Joyce studies that if Dublin were to
be destroyed, it could be rebuilt almost brick-by-brick, from the
descriptions in Joyce's masterwork...
Bloom is also, in many ways, Joyce's self-portrait, so my secondary
candidate would be Joyce himself, whose outer and inner life is
remarkably well-documented in his own books, and biographies like
Richard Ellmann's...
j the robot wisdom pages
jo...@mcs.com http://www.mcs.net/~jorn/
SubGenius
: One of the nice features of this approach is that, for lots of people,
: close reading of great novels is *fun*! And the payoffs start with the
: first novel analysed-- you don't have to do a thousand before you get
: interesting results...
+----------------------------------------SubG-----------------------------+
I know some guys who felt the same way about cold fusion.
Interesting
result: all
people are
Irish Catholics,
Yours etc.,
SubGenius
Doug Turnbull
Just a nitpick or two. Why do you classify the science books you
listed as "grad level?" They should all be easily accessible to anyone
(that's why they call them popular science books, after all). Also why do
you distinguish science books from non-fiction books? Do you know something
the rest of us don't? :)
Doug Turnbull
Jorn Barger
FUNK STEVEN LESLIE,,Student Account <93fu...@wave.scar.utoronto.ca> wrote:
> Well, that sounds interesting, but there are some more
>underlying problems. It's like wanting to be a swatch designer before
>the invention of clockworks.
Nope. This isn't a fan/advocacy thing-- my point is that Bloom
is the best-defined character in literature, which makes him
the most useful reference-point for our first efforts, even as we
start *very* small...
For example, simulate just his getting up, going to work, and going
home. Then add his various errands, and his bringing Stephen home.
Bloom would just be the default Jane-or-John-Doe, at first. (The best
thing about him is his ordinariness...!)
> As a modeller I agree that careful
>observation of consciousness is an essential and often missing
>component of cognitive research. Unfortunately we have not come far
>enough to make such endeavours plausible.
I'm not aiming much higher than Oz or Cyc or TADS, for starters...
SubGenius
: It's occurred to me that one effective way to dramatise this approach
: is to propose a particular work of fiction, and literary character,
: as the best suited to play this role of 'virtual Adam'-- so my vote
: goes to James Joyce's "Ulysses", and its central character Leopold
: Bloom, as the most meticulously documented human in literature!
+--------------------------------------SubG------------------------------+
As opposed to, say, the self-portrait of Augustine in his _Confessions_,
or of Sam Johnson in Boswell's _Life of Johnson_?
Your assertion above seems to posit a rather interesting take on
literature, or rather of literary characters: that they exist in
some sense beyond the text, and a writer's representation of them
can be compared to that standard.
To the contrary, I would suggest that if I write a one-line novel thus:
Baldrick likes turnips.
...then I have fully documented the character of Baldrick. That is,
as this Baldrick exists nowhere but in the abovereproduced novel
(which is not entirely true, as I am clearly referring to external
texts, but I trust you understand the example for what it is), the
act of setting a novel down on a page inherently results in a
`meticulous document[ation]' of the characters in it.
Beyond that, I don't see the utility of your notion of AI, which
I reiterate does not at all look like a question of artificial
intelligence but rather of human simulation.
Or, actually, a simulation of literary characters, which is to say
the simulation of simulated humans.
Yours etc.,
SubGenius
Jorn Barger
> Just a nitpick or two. Why do you classify the science books you
>listed as "grad level?" They should all be easily accessible to anyone
>(that's why they call them popular science books, after all).
I suspect you've been inside academia too long! In that list, grad level
just means not-something-I'd-recommend-to-almost-everybody. I have
lots of friends who wouldn't get past page one of most of those...
> Also why do you distinguish science books from non-fiction books?
"*Other* non-fiction" was implied, of course...
> Do you know something the rest of us don't? :)
Yes, lots of things!!! ;^/
Rachel Meisel
>Jorn Barger (jo...@MCS.COM) wrote:
>
>: It's occurred to me that one effective way to dramatise this approach
>: is to propose a particular work of fiction, and literary character,
>: as the best suited to play this role of 'virtual Adam'-- so my vote
>: goes to James Joyce's "Ulysses", and its central character Leopold
>: Bloom, as the most meticulously documented human in literature!
>
>+--------------------------------------SubG------------------------------+
>As opposed to, say, the self-portrait of Augustine in his _Confessions_,
>or of Sam Johnson in Boswell's _Life of Johnson_?
>
How about a, um, *reliable* self-portrait--say, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's
*Confessions*? From the J. M. Cohen translation, the beginning of
Book I:
My purpose is to display to my kind a portrait in every way true
to nature, and the man I shall portray will be myself. . . .
I know my own heart and understand my fellow man. But I am
made unlike anyone I ever met. . . . If by chance I have used
some immaterial embellishment it has been only to fill a void
due to a defect of memory. I may have taken for fact what was
no more than probability, but I have never put down as true
what I knew to be false.
The end of Book XII:
For my part I publicly and fearlessly declare that anyone,
even if he has not read my writings, who will examine my
nature, my character, my morals, my likings, my pleasures,
and my habits with his own eyes and can still believe me a
dishonorable man, is a man who deserves to be stifled.
SubGenius
: How about a, um, *reliable* self-portrait--say, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's
: *Confessions*?
+---------------------------------SubG------------------------------------+
I hardly seems like reliability---in the sense I take you as meaning---
has any bearing on the issue. If an account of Leopold Bloom is
considered the ne plus ultra, then we are forced to admit for consideration
either entirely fictitous personages or portraits which are at best
representations of actual persons seen through a glass, darkly.
Yours etc.,
SubGenius
Rachel Meisel
I probably expressed myself too obliquely. I was pooh-poohing the idea
that Leopold Bloom, as "the most meticulously documented human in
literature," might be an effective template for the simulation of human
consciousness. That reasoning implies--doesn't it?--that sheer
agglomeration of detail can do the trick. (And then the narrator in
*The Mezzanine* becomes another candidate for "virtual Adam," God forbid.)
Rousseau is a good example of a tremendously well-documented character
who remains impenetrable. His thousands of pages of autobiography--
the *Confessions*, the *Reveries*, the *Dialogues*, a zillion letters--
were written with the goal (he says) of making himself intelligible to
his fellow man. Instead, the more you read, the stronger grows your
conviction that JJR is a liar or a lunatic. So yes, reliability and,
more generally, voice, are relevant. Depiction of character in a great
novel or autobiography cannot serve as a set of instructions for
building a human; the best characterizations are the least general.
Cheers,
Rachel
David Emery
From jo...@MCS.COM (Jorn Barger)
<<
Tom Wolfe, "Bonfire of the Vanities". Why do people attack this?!?!?
>>
Reluctantly I admit to having enjoyed some of the novel - Wolfe is enough
of an artist to get you through the book laughing, even with his obvious
typecasting of characters and situations. Wolfe staked his future on the
book after its success by publishing an article in Harper's as a *literary
manifesto for the 90's* or something like that, where he slammed so many
of his peers, alive or not, that he wound up out on a limb. Faulkner, Joyce,
Woolf, Coover, and many others were charged, either openly or explicitly,
with failing to achieve realism in their fiction, while he pointed to his own
success in _Bonfire_ as an example of fiction achieving its purest objective.
He appeared on Nightline with customary pomp and declared his fiction superior
to the rest of the world's - Margaret Atwood, representing the heathen, made
a civilized appeal for literary diversity but appeared to wither onscreen as
she clearly wasn't prepared for this man's extreme arrogance.
This after Wolfe's first novel, after he had found his fame with a number
of *journalism* books that were, if you look close enough, the same kind of
stuff that _Bonfire_ was made out of, only, with the latter, Wolfe could
invent characters to fit his theme, rather than the other way around. One of
the things that had helped make his previous books successful was that they
read much like fiction. When _Bonfire_ sold many copies, Wolfe couldn't be
content with a successful transition to the fiction format, he had to publicly
elevate himself above those who had dedicated their entire careers to stretch
the boundaries of the genre, also gaining approval with the public. But the
approval he had found signified that, by some twisted rationale, that his work
was better, and he went public to say so and trash his colleagues, placing
them in the adversary's position, seriously comparing himself to Faulkner.
Sorry, Tom, but you ain't that good. I protest with my voice and my money.
If you were that great, you wouldn't have to say so. I will not recommend any
of your books, nor will I buy any more of them or see any movies made from
them, because, essentially, I don't like you. I hope your next book croaks.
Braz
since its beginning. In my view, the main question is: how could you
represent/process that kind of information?
A knowledge-based approach seems to suffer from the same drawbacks which limit
it, in other fields, to specific applications.
Rodrigo Braz
SubGenius
: I probably expressed myself too obliquely.
+---------------------------------SubG------------------------------------+
Oh, I'd hate to think I was responsible for anyone thinking that of
herself. If there is one lesson to be learned, or in fact taught,
on r.a.b., it is that one can never express oneself too obliquely.
One of the boons of the free-for-all environ which is electronic
discussion is that one need not concern oneself overmuch with
publishability in the traditional sense, and as such the writer is
freed from the tyrrany of public opinion.
That being said, I'll hasten---insomuch as I hasten to do much of
anything---to add that many folks could benefit from a few years
of indentured servitude to the aforementioned tyrrany, but that's
an discussion entirely other than such even this rambling rustication
will concern itself with. Er, with which it will concern itself.
Anyway, I've discovered through long years of being a voice narrating
in this particular wilderness that, of any audience reading a given
thread, no more than half of the active participants are likely to
suss out the humour of a joke, or even understand that it is such---
and slightly fewer if it involves sarcasm; of the portion that
understand that it is a joke, only about one in ten will detect
much less understand a pun if it figures in the joke which for the
sake of the argument and the benefits of varying diction I will call
a witticism; of that fraction, only perhaps one in a hundred will
catch any more obscure form of wordplay---i.e., rhyming slang,
metareference, structural content, u.s.w.---; and of all these
fractions, about half of them will, upon detecting the wit or
whatever---that is, upon `getting it'---feel compelled to send
mail to the originator of the comments in question and explain
to said narrator, `You know, that's a pun. See....'
+---------------------------------SubG------------------------------------+
: I was pooh-poohing the idea
: that Leopold Bloom, as "the most meticulously documented human in
: literature," might be an effective template for the simulation of human
: consciousness. That reasoning implies--doesn't it?--that sheer
: agglomeration of detail can do the trick.
+---------------------------------SubG------------------------------------+
Indeed. And I agree. And made some comments to that effect my own
self. To which Mr Barger has, characteristically, made no response.
Yours etc.,
SubGenius
SubGenius
: >: I probably expressed myself too obliquely.
: >Oh, I'd hate to think I was responsible for anyone thinking that of
: >herself. If there is one lesson to be learned, or in fact taught,
: >on r.a.b., it is that one can never express oneself too obliquely.
: Maybe so. In the case of the sentence you quoted above, other ways of
: expressing my thought--for example, CAN'T YOU READ????--seemed slightly
: less felicitous. But maybe that's just me....
+---------------------------------SubG------------------------------------+
...a question which contains neither the same request for information
nor implied context.
In any case, if the unasked, unfelicitous query was the one indeed
employed, it probably would've resulted in a notably different
response as well, something like, `Indeed I can. Can you write?'
(or something similar with a varying number of caps), so on that
basis alone I must again commend the original comment. As we seem
to agree, after al, on the primary subject ostensibly being
discussed. Whatever it is, or was.
Yours etc.,
SubGenius
Rachel Meisel
: I probably expressed myself too obliquely.
SubG said:
>Oh, I'd hate to think I was responsible for anyone thinking that of
>herself. If there is one lesson to be learned, or in fact taught,
>on r.a.b., it is that one can never express oneself too obliquely.
Like an idiot, I replied:
: Maybe so. In the case of the sentence you quoted above, other ways of
: expressing my thought--for example, CAN'T YOU READ????--seemed slightly
: less felicitous. But maybe that's just me....
SubG said:
>In any case, if the unasked, unfelicitous query was the one indeed
>employed, it probably would've resulted in a notably different
>response as well, something like, `Indeed I can. Can you write?'
>(or something similar with a varying number of caps), so on that
>basis alone I must again commend the original comment.
I *do* apologize. I meant to poke fun at the excessively cringing
tone of my original remark; somehow I overcorrected and moved from
obliquity to obloquy, which was the farthest thing from my mind. Mea
culpa.
Something About Books:
A usually reliable source gave me Stevie Smith's _Novel on Yellow
Paper_. This edition is quite annoyingly printed on bright yellow
paper, unreadable for more than three pages or so at a stretch. From
the little I've read it looks, mannered though it is, as if it may
be worth tracking down on *white* paper. Has anyone out there read it?
Cheers,
Rachel
SubGenius
[bulk of saga deleted]
: >In any case, if the unasked, unfelicitous query was the one indeed
: >employed, it probably would've resulted in a notably different
: >response as well, something like, `Indeed I can. Can you write?'
: >(or something similar with a varying number of caps), so on that
: >basis alone I must again commend the original comment.
: I *do* apologize. I meant to poke fun at the excessively cringing
: tone of my original remark; somehow I overcorrected and moved from
: obliquity to obloquy, which was the farthest thing from my mind. Mea
: culpa.
+-----------------------------------SubG-------------------------------+
No apology required. And if one had been, I'm sure that seeing
`obloquy' used in a sentence would more than make ammends.
+-----------------------------------SubG-------------------------------+
: Something About Books:
: A usually reliable source gave me Stevie Smith's _Novel on Yellow
: Paper_. This edition is quite annoyingly printed on bright yellow
: paper, unreadable for more than three pages or so at a stretch. From
: the little I've read it looks, mannered though it is, as if it may
: be worth tracking down on *white* paper. Has anyone out there read it?
+-----------------------------------SubG-------------------------------+
This is an aspect of the perineal...er PERENNIAL, sorry....perennial
division between those who think that typography is an essential---nay,
intergral---component in the perception of a novel, of equal or near-
equivalent importance with the writing. Others say that reading a
yellowed and cracking paperback is essentially the same reading
experience as reading any other format.
I remain firmly in the first camp, and although on some matters the
question involves such transubstantial aestheic evaluations as it
strains credulity to suspect that any headway in what for the sake
of the argument we could call the argument could be made (my
contention, for example, that skiffy McNovels of a certain bygone
era are best appreciated [if that is indeed the word and I rather
strongly suspect it isn't] in yellowing paperbacks with stereotypically
bad eye-popping artwork would fall into this category), in other
cases it seems unlikely that any objection could be raised (comparison
of several editions of _Tristram Shandy_, say, or the novels of
Alasdair Gray, which cannot be divorced from their form without also
loosing no small percentage of their content).
_The Ideal, Genuine Man_ (the recommendation of which it appears
will be my lot at least twice this week), for instance, can be
obtained on plain, white paper and thus read in such a format,
but never should be.
Yours etc.,
SubGenius