Re: Statements against new.net?

[Vadim Antonov <avg () kotovnik com>]

Of course, one may choose to treat RFC as a gospel, but to
me (and i hope to anyone interested in how cognition works
to the point of actually getting acquainted with the relevant
research) the attached passage sounds quite like a bunch of
random noise :)  Mostly because it assumes that human-to-human
communication is a reasoned process, concerned with consistent
intepretation.  In fact, most of what makes, for example, art
interesting is that it does not have a singular, well defined
interpretation.

--vadim

PS  This one, i guess, is brought to you by the Society Against
    De-Humanization Of Internet Users

    <tongue firmly in cheek>

PPS Yes, I think any form which _restricts_ potential models of
    communication is bad.  Such as forcing communications to be
    moderated by a singular hierarchical structure.  This whole
    thread won't be there in the first place if the scheme actually
    worked well in the real world.  Hierarchies do not scale and
    cannot adequately tolerate internalized adversity.


On Wed, 14 Mar 2001, Geoff Huston wrote:

> At 3/14/01 07:56 AM, Vadim Antonov wrote:
>
>
> > That is based on the assumption that consistency is necessary
> > or desireable :)  Of course, it is dear to an engineer's mind,
> > but the case from the sociological point of view is far from
> > clear-cut.  In fact, way too many woes of human societies can
> > be (at least indirectly) attributed to the misguided attempts
> > to enforce consistency.
>
> This assumption is explicitly addressed in the RFC - I quote:
>
> ------
> 1.1. Maintenance of a Common Symbol Set
>
> Effective communications between two parties requires two essential 
> preconditions:
>
>    - The existence of a common symbol set, and
>
>    - The existence of a common semantic interpretation of these symbols.
> Failure to meet the first condition implies a failure to communicate at 
> all, while failure to meet the second implies that the meaning of the 
> communication is lost.
>
> In the case of a public communications system this condition of a common 
> symbol set with a common semantic interpretation must be further 
> strengthened to that of a unique symbol set with a unique semantic 
> interpretation. This condition of uniqueness allows any party to initiate a 
> communication that can be received and understood by any other party. Such 
> a condition rules out the ability to define a symbol within some bounded 
> context. In such a case, once the communication moves out of the context of 
> interpretation in which it was defined, the meaning of the symbol becomes 
> lost.