The Logic Off Topic list

Can I first thank other people for giving me an insight into how 'vibed'
they get by maths. I have to say that I don't (yet - may be a function of
who taught me, how they taught me or my attitude and understanding when I
was taught maths) see the patterns at all. I wanted to make the point that
it is the discerning of pattern/structure which gives the sense of beauty
and makes one want to go deeper.

I did a degree in Psychology an awfully long time ago, which may well
explain my attitude to social sciences as manifested on this list recently,
ie cynical to a great degree. As an area for study it benefits from dropping
of the insecure longing to be accepted in 'hard science' terms and a
creative and playful attitude, which can lead to a broadening of its vision.
I am interested in the outlook of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, which is
quite jokey and playful and which also seems to have some powerful ideas one
can tinker with immediately. One example is the idea that individuals may
have a preferred sensory modality - sight, touch, taste, smell, whatever -
by which they attach meaning to events and memories. You can see a little of
this, for example, in the way that people describe synth sounds as crunchy,
brittle, dark etc. If I don't get the pattern in maths yet maybe it's
because I haven't encountered it in a sensory modality which is comfortable
for me. I could extend and improvise on this idea to suggest that on this
list we may be encountering a lot of this sort of thing -  what might be
called individual specifics in the way that people understand posts,
mediated through people from different backgrounds using English which is a
slippery language at the best of times. I remember talking to an Indian
woman once - a native Hindi speaker if I'm correct- who suggested that the
best way to see English was as a sort of super-Creole or patois, a vibrant
mixture of all sorts of linguistic elements which was very elastic and had
room for lots of ambiguity. Which leads to individual misunderstandings...

And then we get the cultural specifics and misunderstandings:

>> And as for bowing one's head: bollocks.  No-one has to bow
>> for anyone.  Ever.
> Where I come from, that is what we do. It is as natural to me to bow my
> head on arrival and departure as it is to you to shake a hand. When, for
> example, I greet my mother, I bow my head. When I leave her, I bow my head.

This is fascinating stuff. This brings me back to a point I nearly made in
previous exchanges with young master Kool about the English or anyone else
not getting it with other cultures. When Afro-Carribean families first came
to the UK and their kids started in school there were frequent problems when
they got into trouble with teachers. Teachers would give a kid a telling off
and he or she would bow their head and look down. The teacher would get
furious at this and yell 'Look at me when I'm talking to you!' and crank the
punishment up even more for this insolence, being totally unaware that these
kids were taught to _look down_ as a mark of respect when being disciplined.
Who knows how much disaffection and unhappiness arose from this sort of
misunderstanding? Details are important. We owe it to each other to learn
about these things, without beating ourselves up if we don't get it all
first time round.

Having been around buddhism, meditation and other Eastern-influenced stuff a
bit I have shaken off enough of the hangovers of a Western Catholic
upbringing to see being able to bow to others when one feels like it as not
subservience but a way of respecting others and therefore a way of
respecting oneself.

And that's enough individually-specific bollocks from me!

Tony Thompson