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From: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Acting irrationally (was Re: Free Will & Self Awareness)
Keywords: I should stay out of this, but what the hell...
Message-ID: <5499@venera.isi.edu>
Date: 12 May 88 14:31:41 GMT
References: <770@onion.cs.reading.ac.uk> <1177@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> <10942@sunybcs.UUCP> <31024@linus.UUCP> <28798@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> <31570@linus.UUCP>
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From: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Acting irrationally (was Re: Free Will & Self Awareness)
Keywords: I should stay out of this, but what the hell...
Message-ID: <5499@venera.isi.edu>
Date: 12 May 88 14:31:41 GMT
References: <770@onion.cs.reading.ac.uk> <1177@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> <10942@sunybcs.UUCP> <31024@linus.UUCP> <28798@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> <31570@linus.UUCP>
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Reply-To: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu.UUCP (Stephen Smoliar)

In article <31570@linus.UUCP> bwk@mbunix (Barry Kort) writes:
>I appreciated Bruce Krulwich's analysis of the cognitive chain
>initiated by a yelling/hitting episode.  The fifth (and last)
>link in the chain of reasoning, is that the target of the verbal
>abuse draws a conclusion about the abuser:
>
>>    5.  Thus he learns that the other person feels strongly about
>>        something, which most of the time is the goal that the yeller
>>        or hitter had in the first place
>
>Wouldn't it have been easier if the yeller had simply disclosed his/her
>value system in the first place?  Or do I have an unrealistic expectation
>that the yeller is in fact able to articulate his/her value system to an
>inquiring mind?
>
As long as the agents we are talking about are "all-too-human" (as Nietzsche
put it), your expectation is quite unrealistic.  I think you are overlooking
how great an extent we rely on implict assumptions in any intercourse.  If
we had to articulate everything explicitly, we would probably never get around
to discussing what we really wanted to discuss.  The problem comes in deciding
WHAT needs to be explicitly articulated and what can be left in the "implicit
background."  That is a problem which we, as humans, seem to deal with rather
poorly, which is why there is so much yeeling and hitting in the world.