I am fascinated by the fact that the enthusiastic relative newcomer Max has brought up so many ideas and issues that we have already discussed to one degree or another. I would be equally fascinated by an analysis of everything that's been posted here with some sort of statistical rank of the concepts that interest us, in our little arcane world. I'll never get around to that, though. Way too old and lazy. Is there a shared body of knowledge among us post-modern linguaphiles? Can anyone take this groping and refine it a bit, so I'll know what I'm talking about?

I am fascinated by the fact that the enthusiastic relative newcomer Max has brought up so many ideas and issues that we have already discussed to one degree or another.

"Entusiastic newcomer" - what a charming euphemism for "lazy oaf who clumsily rehashes threads for which he was too lazy to look." I thank you for your graciousness. Surely the very nature of this board would ensure that those who posted to it shared a very specific commonality of interests. I am largely ignorant of psychology - "collective unconscious" suggests little more to me than a sleeping kibbutz - so I will simply say that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and finish with that superlative non sequitur. Adieu.

"Nationalism is an infantile disease, the measles of humanity" - Albert Einstein

>the enthusiastic relative newcomer Max has brought up so many ideas and issues that we have already discussed to one degree or another.<

But if Max wasn't interested in the same kind of things as the rest of us, he'd had taken a quick squizz at the board, sighed and moved on without bothering to sign up and post things.

>statistical rank of the concepts that interest us<

Please, Anna..
I have been interested in statistics for a long time, more as a game than anything else, but I have come to the conclusion that, as a means to find out what it essential or important in our life, it has done more harm than good! I find it even less suited to EXPLAIN things: begging the question is the usual outcome. Progress and creativity is more often linked to what's improbable, unlikely and unpredictable.
So why not let this river of thoughts carve its own bed? In any case it's never twice the same when you enter it.

I'm sorry if this thread was taken as some sort of criticism; it certainly wasn't meant to be.

And wsieber, thank you for helping me think this through. "Statistical" wasn't the best description of what I'm trying to work out here. Have you ever read "Gödel, Escher, Bach" by Hofstadter? I'm struggling though that now. That's what I'm looking for, the golden braid.

>Have you ever read "Gödel, Escher, Bach" by Hofstadter? I'm struggling though that now. That's what I'm looking for, the golden braid.<

AnnaStrophic,

I read it years ago and enjoyed it and the ideas it raised. It's been a while and I may have remembered the arguments wrongly, or twisted them to suit my meaning, but I think there's a difference between Hofstadter's point and what you are noticing.

Hofstadter is talking about self-replication and self-reference. The similar things are coming from one source. What's happening on the board is that the one source (the board) is attracting similar things (new members with like concerns and interests) from outside. So it's not really self-referencing. Gödel, Escher, Bach - and especially Gödel, with DNA - is self-referencing and much more mindblowing. A picture of yourself looking at a picture of yourself looking at a picture of....

(Max, if you're reading this, aren't you honoured to have become the focus of such debate?)

Max, if you're reading this, aren't you honoured to have become the focus of such debate?

I did Anna a gross disservice by my clumsily flippant initial reply to her post, so I have been keeping out of it ever since.