[Gllug] bash-tips, learning styles and lofty pursuits

[Walter Stanish]

> That depends on which definition of pedant you choose.  I think both NIX
> and DD were using the term in the "rules lawyer" sense, in which case
> you are wrong; that kind of pedant can only insist on things that are
> defined in an existing ruleset.  Humans being what they are, there's
> certainly a very large pool of available rulesets, but it's not
> infinite.
> 
> Pedantic enough for you?

One of the more interesting academic areas I've dabbled with readings
in has been linguistics.  It's a fundamental notion in language theory
that no two people, upon hearing or reading the 'same word', 
actually conjure up precisely the same meaning in their mind.

Therefore, communicating a ruleset fundamentally distills it in to
at *least* three versions:
 - the 'original' version in the speaker/writer's mind
 - the written or spoken representation thereof
 - the resulting version within the listener/reader's mind.

Of course, then there are questions of ... echoes ... interactions with
other sounds (in the case of spoken versions) / physical markings
(in the case of written versions) that may distort or render incomplete
the original representation over time.  Since the speaker/writer did,
arguably (for determinists), create the original through the act of
attempted communication, then all subsequent versions are still to some
extent their creations.  And the interpretation of those will change
with every additional person who listens or reads.  And if nobody
else listens or reads, then perhaps that willed act of communication
still somehow affects the rest of us, like the butterfly effect, as it
did enter our physical realm.  (Some would say, thinking is within the
same physical realm, and there is only one realm, and therefore it is
deterministic).  So in short, it could be argued that there are
infinite versions.  The next step of course is physics, metaphysics,
and the beautiful interactions of ten thousand parallel worlds in our
amazing soup of existence(s)...

Maybe this is where computers draw their power, and what ultimately draws
some of us toward them as children (I know it's what did it for me).
They are man-made machines that functioning within our physical realm of
physical reality that still manage to implement amazingly complex systems
of pure logic.  Perpendicular worlds.  Alternate realities with totally
different limitations, where we are the ultimate rulers, and the mind
can play indifferent.

So... UNIX.

But hey, knock it back to lawyers if you want!  Personally I like to use
my powers of imagination ;)

- Walter
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