2008.09.08 01:00 – Meta-snap!

Gaya was the guardian on call for this session. Please add comments if willing.

Wol Euler: god morning, Gaya.
Gaya Ethaniel: _/!\_
Gaya Ethaniel: Good morning Wol. How are you?
Wol Euler: pretty well, thanks. and yourself?
Gaya Ethaniel smiles. Well thank you.
Wol Euler: I'm fascinated to watch your new outfit rezzing bit by bit.
Gaya Ethaniel smiles.
Gaya Ethaniel sips her tea.
Wol Euler smiles and raises her cup in salute.
Gaya Ethaniel smiles.

---

Wol Euler: have you been reading the discussion on identity and avs in the logs, Gaya?
Gaya Ethaniel: Hm... a little behind with catching up with logs atm. Translating map for PaB area and also attempting to add more excerpts. Could you point out which ones?
Wol Euler: I could mark a few, somehow; I've been adding tags to logs as they occur to me.
Gaya Ethaniel smiles. A good idea.
Wol Euler: ThreeD and Adelene appear to be holding a long discussion in instalments about this.
Gaya Ethaniel: Under Guardian contribution?
Wol Euler: yes, that too, but also in the normal session logs.
Wol Euler: (thanks for reminding me, I'll tag those too)
Gaya Ethaniel: Ah... how do I view logs that are flagged up?
Wol Euler: very tricky! the Deki wiki software doesn't seem to have any easy way to get there.
Gaya Ethaniel: Ah
Wol Euler: I put links on all the suggestions on the Tags info page.
Wol Euler: so any of those can be found that way.
Wol Euler: but you'd never find the log that I tagged with "sawdust" unless you knew that there was one, to search for it.
Gaya Ethaniel: Where can I find the Tags info page?
Wol Euler: http://playasbeing.wik.is/Information/Guardian_Tutorial/Tagging_Guidelines
Wol Euler: what I was going to say about it is this:
Gaya Ethaniel: So the log is under identity?
Wol Euler: it's a common tag for such discussions, yes.
Gaya Ethaniel: Ah ok
Wol Euler: there doesn't seem any way to have the system auto-create a list of tags that were actually used, though.
Gaya Ethaniel: Haven't tag logs other than dates so far but it does sound like a bit of hassle to tag by contents
Wol Euler: mm, just requires imagination :-) but not too much of it.
Gaya Ethaniel smiles. Ok, I will look into it.

---

Gaya Ethaniel: So have you read this log 'Don't worry your pretty little head about that'?
Wol Euler: yes, that was a good one.
Gaya Ethaniel: So this theme of identity and avs plays largely on your mind recently?
Wol Euler: of course identity and gender and alts are my hobbyhorses, so I would say that.
Gaya Ethaniel smiles. Pls say more?
Wol Euler: meta-snap :-)
Gaya Ethaniel smiles. Yes, again.
Wol Euler: well, it fascinates me, as I've said before and will doubtless say again.
Wol Euler: I was unprepared for the strength of my alt's individuality, that he really is a separate personality.
Wol Euler: and that told me a lot about myself, both Wol and the RL-me
Gaya Ethaniel listens
Wol Euler: as I read the logs of those late night sessions
Wol Euler: I thought, I wish I could be there to hear it.
Gaya Ethaniel smiles.
Wol Euler: Now, had I been there, I would have read onscreen the same text that I was reeading in the log!
Wol Euler: but there is a difference, and that dif is the avatar.
Gaya Ethaniel: And it does feel different even though same texts if you attend the actual session somehow
Wol Euler: mmhm
Gaya Ethaniel: meta-snap again <smile>
Wol Euler: plus being able to ask questions, of course.
Wol Euler: lol
Gaya Ethaniel nods
Gaya Ethaniel: What are some of your questions if you remember?
Wol Euler shakes her head. Not offhand, I should have written them down but didn't bother.
Gaya Ethaniel: Ah ok
Gaya Ethaniel: Did you generally find an agreement or disagreement while reading those logs?
Wol Euler: agreement, definitely.

---

Wol Euler: the wiki really needs meta-data. Tags are a start, but it needs cross-referencing too.
Gaya Ethaniel nods
Gaya Ethaniel sees a huge spreadsheet emerging...
Wol Euler: a mini-Internet.
Gaya Ethaniel smiles
Wol Euler: many years ago when the Internet was fresh and exciting, I wrote on Everything.com
Wol Euler: kind of a forerunner to the wikipedia, but without any quality control at all.
Wol Euler: Mostly crud,, with a few widely-scattered gems in it.
Gaya Ethaniel smiles.
Wol Euler: but full of links, some articles were nothing but links.
Wol Euler: there was an informal competition to get the highest ratio of links to words in an article.
Gaya Ethaniel nods
Wol Euler: some authors got over 1:2 (every other word linked)
Gaya Ethaniel: Ah
Wol Euler: amusing but ultimately futile :-)
Gaya Ethaniel nods
Wol Euler: much like RL, really, when I think of it.
Gaya Ethaniel: In what ways?
Wol Euler apologises for her bad joke. "Amusing but ultimately futile"
Gaya Ethaniel: No I mean... what makes an effort futile?
Wol Euler: in this case, that it defeats itself. Linking every word means that no word is special. It's like writing a whole paragraph in bold italic: there is no emphasis there, whereas a single bold word is emphasized.
Gaya Ethaniel: Ah... futile to the users as a whole you mean
Wol Euler: the authors who played that game ended up having to make pages for the commonest of words
Wol Euler: yes
Wol Euler: it seriously degraded the average usefulness and interestingness of the project.
Gaya Ethaniel nods. Perhaps those authors enjoyed doing it though, satisfying their obsessive streak
Wol Euler: which is one of the reasons why we use wikipedia not everything.com now.
Gaya Ethaniel: Ah.. never heard of everything.com before
Wol Euler: oh yes, I'm sure it was great fun. I had and still have an aesthetic appreciation for the game.
Wol Euler nods. It got too obsessive, the ratio of signal to noise was very low in the end.
Gaya Ethaniel: Interesting choice of the word here...'game'
Gaya Ethaniel: Ah ok
Wol Euler: that competition was definitely a game.
Gaya Ethaniel: Sounds like geek stuff <laugh>
Wol Euler: definitely!
Gaya Ethaniel smiles

---

Wol Euler: roughly "some people can only learn by personal experience"
Gaya Ethaniel: Well.. that's how I learn best, especially by failing
Wol Euler: true, it has a value. no question.
Wol Euler: but some things do not need to be learned.
Gaya Ethaniel laughs... then ponders. Such as?
Wol Euler: doing your own taxes, for instance. I would need to be a full-time tax-law specialist to find the dodges and loopholes that my accountant thinks up.
Wol Euler: I *could* learn all that, but I do not wish to.
Gaya Ethaniel nods
Wol Euler: sometimes, learning can be wasted except for the factor of curiosity and sheer joy, of course. Which is fair enough.
Gaya Ethaniel: Time spent could be more costly at the end
Gaya Ethaniel: Sure
Gaya Ethaniel can't be good at everything
Wol Euler: yes, one can spend far more of the time = money than getting someone else to do for them. but many don't see that.
Gaya Ethaniel: It could be more than curiosity though... what drives such people to make a wrong decision like that?
Wol Euler: principally money, short-sightedness about time = money.
Wol Euler: in case of an employee making such a decision, companies think that employees are basically free. As long as they turn up, it doesn't matter what they do. Idiocy!
Gaya Ethaniel feels sad about that... how some companies see their employees are free
Gaya Ethaniel: Though... I've seen 'nuf ppl not doing best at work too
Wol Euler: yep, because it implies that that employee cannot make a difference to the company, their products or their customers.
Gaya Ethaniel: Mistrust on both parts it seems
Wol Euler: probably.
Gaya Ethaniel ponders...
Gaya Ethaniel: A fact of life?
Gaya Ethaniel: Like most of ppl unconcerned about environment?
Wol Euler: again, probably.
Wol Euler: because being concerned would require me to change my lifestyle and habits.
Wol Euler: or job.
Gaya Ethaniel nods. Yes... true
Gaya Ethaniel: Not an easy thing to do...
Wol Euler: you're right, there is an element of power politics in that attitude too. If the employee is able to (enabled to) be truly useful, then they are to that extent free from their bosses' control.
Wol Euler: Egad, we can't have that!
Gaya Ethaniel wearily smiles...

---

Gaya Ethaniel: I kind of accept how things are more though feel sad instead of angry
Gaya Ethaniel: Being angry about how life is happens if 'I' perceive it to be directed at RL person personally. Even this happens less too now
Wol Euler smiles. That's a good sign, I think.
Gaya Ethaniel: Yes, it makes my daily life easier. Do what I can and leave the rest to the natural course
Wol Euler: mmhmm
Gaya Ethaniel: Realising there's not much I can do to change how things are... kind of crucial
Gaya Ethaniel: Do you get angry also Wol?
Wol Euler: I haven't been really angry since long before I became Wol :-)
Gaya Ethaniel smiles.
Wol Euler: as a child and teenager, I had a terrible temper, I would shout and rage at the most insignificant of imagined provocations
Wol Euler: that calmed down in my twenties, seemingly by itself.
Wol Euler: I've become almost placid during the last few years.
Gaya Ethaniel: Seemingly? Wow... I managed since I started meditation. Do you know how you got to calm down?
Wol Euler: getting away from home was a lot of it. It was mostly frustration, feeling held back.
Wol Euler: Being out in the world as a student showed me quite directly, the what holding-back there was came actually from myself, not my parents.
Wol Euler: I could of course have continued being angry at them, or at myself, but I rather came to terms with the world.
Gaya Ethaniel nods...
Wol Euler: And realizing that I wasn't the best and cleverest person in the world helped a lot too.
Wol Euler: One is less inclined to shout at incompetence when one recognizes it in oneself.
Gaya Ethaniel: We all think that when young
Wol Euler: I went from feeling that the world was my enemy, to seeing myself in it, part of it,, one of many of us all ... "fighting the same fight" is close but a bit too graphically vivid.
Gaya Ethaniel nods
Wol Euler: loss of vividness was part of it, I think. As a child, I had the Saturation colour-slider turned up far too high :-)
Wol Euler: I saw fluorescent primary tones only, quite blinding.
Gaya Ethaniel smiles
Wol Euler: with age, I turned it down and can now see muted tones, shades and variations.
Wol Euler: a colour _scale_ in fact.
Gaya Ethaniel: Like I did in black and white. I now see shades of black and white as well as greys
Wol Euler: exactly.
Gaya Ethaniel smiles
Wol Euler: people laugh at architects for discussing which shade of white to paint their buildings, but it's true.
Gaya Ethaniel: No way...
Wol Euler: open any four books and lay them across each other, you will see four different "white" papers.
Gaya Ethaniel nods
Wol Euler: take a black blouse from one outfit and lay it across black pants from another. If you look closely, they will not match. Black is not black.
Gaya Ethaniel nods

---

Wol Euler: it took me over thirty years to see this.
Gaya Ethaniel: Ah... so meditation is good! Speed things up a bit <smile>
Wol Euler laughs
Wol Euler: insofar as faster == better, of course.
Wol Euler: which is not always true.
Gaya Ethaniel: Yes depends on individual
Gaya Ethaniel: So it should read - Ah... so meditation is good for me! Speed things up a bit for me at least <smile>
Wol Euler: lol
Gaya Ethaniel: Hm... there is a 'should' in the sentence
Wol Euler: it's all just perception, the Buddhists would say.
Gaya Ethaniel nods
Gaya Ethaniel: Ah... that's why I used 'should' because it's perception... of course...
Gaya Ethaniel: These days I watch for words I use in particular, 'should' 'could' and 'must' and so on
Gaya Ethaniel: Don't necessarily 'think' before I use it but after saying it, I look back on why I'd used it
Wol Euler nods
Gaya Ethaniel: Tells me a lot about how I view things, ppl and the world
Wol Euler: yes, indeed. My grandfather had a similar saying
Wol Euler: Don't say "I can't", say "I won't" because you _can_ do anything that you want
Gaya Ethaniel: Ah...
Wol Euler: So say that sentence again using "won't", and then either change your wants and do it anyway, or let it go forever and be done with it.
Wol Euler: True wisdom.
Gaya Ethaniel: Wow... that's a gem
Gaya Ethaniel: meta-snap strikes again
Wol Euler: heheheheh

---

Wol Euler: well, this is turning out to be a full log :-)
Gaya Ethaniel smiles. Yes it is
Gaya Ethaniel: Title suggestion?
Wol Euler: "let it go forever"?
Gaya Ethaniel smiles. Nice one.
Wol Euler: naaah
Gaya Ethaniel: More ideas?
Wol Euler skims the chat history
Wol Euler: shades of white? saturation?
Gaya Ethaniel: Oh yes shades of white is a good one too
Wol Euler: no: the best is: meta-snap
Wol Euler: lol
Gaya Ethaniel smiles
Wol Euler: and yes, alas, I must go.
Gaya Ethaniel: Good day Wol. See you soon.
Wol Euler: it's been grand, Gaya, thank you for a great conversation.
Gaya Ethaniel: _/!\_
Gaya Ethaniel: Pleasure. Same here
Wol Euler: bye for now