Monday, February 28, 2005

It's always good to hear from a friend, Andrew

Dr. Clam said:
How can we get Androoo to pay attention to your blog, do you think?

Well, apart from the fact that you somehow got his attention anyway, I guess since we think we know some of how he thinks we should put ourselves in his perspective, and he can say hmm. yes, that sounds like me or whatever.

Andrew would have said:

Well I'm not particularly interested in Israel/Palestine because I don't think that their conflict is going to affect me personally unless our country goes in and gets caught in the crossfire. That's why I was so angry that Australia went into Iraq (supporting America). We basically wouldn't have been affected negatively at all if we'd just said "Thanks, but no thanks, It's got nothing to do with us." Even protecting the Japanese engineers is hypocritical as they try to rebuild things we helped destroy. Your game theory model may or may not explain why the Arab-Israeli conflict persists, but it's not our responsibility to save them from each other's violent acts. By pursuing our view of moral righteousness onto them, we can only complicate the situation for them partly at our own expense.

Yes, and I have no problem with this, as this is about what I get from Kylie. But Kylie has no interest at all in game theory or politics. I know that there is a class of games called "diplomacy" games, but I haven't actually played one. I don't know if there is any where you can sabotage other people's diplomacy, or how that plays out.

On a different note, I am going to put ten things I've done... when I get time.

5 comments:

Marco Parigi said...

That's ok, I was just testing to see if I could get a reaction :) I'll move on to what I think your underlying assumptions are, later. In the meantime, we can blog at tangential lines of life.

Dr Clam said...
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Dr Clam said...
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Dr Clam said...
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Dr Clam said...

It's good to see you all, metaphorically speaking! All the deleted posts are just accidental copies of this one, not over-the-top ranting, do not worry...

First, I don't care *enough* about these subjects to want to debate them (I do care about them, but not as much as you). Topics I care more about include science, the environment, and the arts, particularly literature, music, and film. I would be more likely to join in on these topics of discussion.How do you know we care more than you? We just might like discussing them more. :)
The main problem with water on Mars and quantum entanglement is that all you can say is ‘gee whiz!’ unless you know enough to talk about it all day with your geek friends at work. See my penultimate Accidental Blog post. Otherwise I would love to talk about that stuff too!
I will resist the temptation to start a global warming or vegetarianism battle-of-the-memes. Do you reckon ‘Donnie Darko’ hapily sacrificed himself at the end of the film, or that he just forgot an airplane engine was going to drop on his house? I reckon the latter, Ev the former. Please forgive me if this has already appeared on ‘Film Forensics’ and I missed it.

Second, broadly speaking, we have "clearing the air" versus "picking at sores". There are *some areas* in which we have fundamentally different viewpoints, and in which it would take an enormous amount of debate to resolve our differences, if it were possible to do so at all. See also: "Land War In Asia".Now, so long as we don’t know why you believe what you believe, we will go on suspecting that you are merely conforming to your peer group. I know I am and I am pretty sure Marco is very interested in how people come to form their opinions. You know we can get along with all sorts of people with insane opinions, considering all the fundamentalists we hang out with.

Third, I already feel much too guilty about not doing the things I ought to be doing. I don't want to start a new thing that will suck up even more time and energy.Define ‘ought’!