--- In morelife@yahoogroups.com, Ólafur Páll Ólafsson
<olafurpall@y...> wrote:
>
> Paul Wakfer wrote:
>
>> Olafur Pall Olafsson wrote:
>
>>> Paul Wakfer wrote:
>
>> Hi Olafur,
>>
>> After finishing this reply and reading it to Kitty, she suggested that
>> the analysis that we have done in parts of it would be of benefit to
>> readers of MoreLife Yahoo. So would you please post the text of this
>> message (and your reply, if you wish to make one) to the MoreLife group.
>> I will then edit in any necessary previous text to make it fully clear,
>> make prefacing remarks about how it arose and clean up the
>> formatting.
>
> Cleaning it up looks like a tough job, the message looks
> pretty messy. I tried using the reply function in the Yahoo Mail
> program and then copying the message but the new inline did not get
> copied so I decided to add "Olafur:" in front of my new reply as you
> can see.
>
> [Your problem is that you have the message composition option in
> Yahoo mail set to color and graphics (html) instead of text. If you
> set it to text mode then replies will automatically get the ">"
> character in front of each line and, being a standard character, this
> can be copied from one message to another. I generally compose all
> messages for groups, particularly for newsgroups, in text mode because
> it is the standard that works for everyone. In any case, I fixed the
> formatting and removed your "Olafur:" since it is now unnecessary. --Paul]

Yes it is set to html, and I tried changing the formatting to text
mode but since I had started the message in html mode changing it
made it even more messed up. I would've had to use text mode from
the beginning for it to work without problem.

<snip by Olafur>

>> This lack of time has
>> always been a source of frustration with me, but I have learned to be
>> more at ease with it as I have matured in wisdom. In addition, as a
>> recreation (ie learning for fun), I find mathematics, physics and
>> philosophy to be much more enjoyable than the extreme complexity and
>> *arbitrariness* of human physiology, molecular biochemistry and
>> genetics. I think it is very certain that the trial and error method of
>> evolution has not generated an optimal design.
>
> I also have limited interest in human physiology and therefore I
> usually do not read anything about life-extension unless I see how
> it can possibly be put to practical use.
>
> [However, it is necessary to have some major basic understanding of
> human physiology in order to correctly interpret many research
> findings. This is the area in which many otherwise highly intelligent
> and knowledgeable posters on sci.life-extension are greatly lacking.
> As part of my work to prepare myself in the entire area of human
> health and life extension, I did study both physiology and
> biochemistry in some detail. --Paul]

I don't have very much knowledge in human physiology besides what I
learned in high school although I've learned a lot during my studies
on life-extension.

> Paul Wakfer wrote:
>
>> Olafur Pall Olafsson wrote:
>
>>> Paul Wakfer wrote:
>
>>>> Olafur Pall Olafsson wrote:
>
>>>>> Paul Wakfer wrote:
>
>>>>>> Olafur Pall Olafsson wrote:
>
>>>>>>> Paul Wakfer wrote:

<snip by Olafur>

>> BTW, your statement: "But I don't remember ever being dishonest with
>> you" made both I and Kitty chuckle, because the "with you" also
>> "colored" the phrase so that it could be read as implying that you
>> sometimes are dishonest with other people! Is this an admission that you
>> really meant to make? (I doubt it is either such an admission or that it
>> is even true.)
>
> You're right, it is not an admission I intended to make. I
> consider myself an honest person. But speaking of honesty I would be
> lying if I said I was always 100% honest with people. There are
> times where I try avoiding the truth and don't talk completely
> straight out when asked about something,
>
> [It is perfectly acceptable to not volunteer information that you do
> not think is necessary or helpful, particularly when having necessary
> dealings with people who you are quite sure will not understand or are
> in a position of some coercive or monopoly power over you. Of course,
> for this same reason you will want to keep your dealings with such
> people to an absolute minimum. This is part of the nature of what I
> call a "tiny perfect" relationship. --Paul]

I was mainly referring to cases where I don't think people will
understand me. In such cases I try to avoid the truth rather than
directly lie to them. In cases where people are in position of
coercive power over me on the other hand I don't hesitate to lie.

[The value of the relationship to *you* would be the determining factor in how
much you want the other person to understand you. This building of understanding
requires some initial risk by letting things be known about one's self. If there
is reciprocation, the building of a relationship can begin. Determining the
amount of agreement on foundational matters and willingness to discuss
differences for establishment of possible additional agreement can then proceed.
If the people you are referring to, Olafur, were just casual acquaintances (or
even semi-strangers) for whom you had no desire to build a closer relationship,
then giving them a detailed explanation so that they could understand a complex
situation in which you had been involved would likely not be a good use of your
time. There are times when I have done similarly. **Kitty]


> and in rare cases I might even lie.
>
> [Which is completely acceptable when you are relating to someone
> with coercive or monopoly power over you. It is only not correct (not
> in your best interest long range) when you are dealing with someone in
> a fully voluntary relationship. --Paul]

I agree, and that is why I haven't lied to you.

> But I
> never enter a conversation with the intention of lying to the person,
> there are just some cases in which I end up being asked about
> something I really don't want to talk about. These are cases in
> which I feel so uncomfortable telling the truth (usually because I'm
> ashamed of it) that I try avoiding it and in worst cases I lie.
>
> [Olafur, you have no "duty" to answer answer a question from
> someone. You need to learn how to say "no, I do not wish to answer
> that question or to talk about it". OTOH, you also need to think about
> anything about which you feel ashamed, so that you can understand why
> you should not feel that way. Everyone makes mistakes of many kinds.
> It is important to acknowledge them, to learn from them, to forgive
> yourself and to terminate any shame. You cannot continue to live with
> shame. --Paul]

I am not afraid of admitting mistakes. I'm only ashamed of them for a
short while since I've learned to terminate any shame from my
mistakes.

[Hopefully, even that "short while" will diminish as you get older/wiser.
--Paul]


However there are some things I am ashamed of that are not
mistakes. I realise that this is not reasonable but I still find it
hard to eliminate the shame in some cases. And in some of the cases
the reason I don't want to talk about something is because I'm shy
about it not because I'm ashamed of it.

[I guess I am having a hard time trying to imagine what sort of incident or
action is something about which you would be ashamed, but is not a mistake. If
it was not a mistake (of some kind), then the question of why you did it arises.
Perhaps we each have a different idea of what constitutes a mistake. Even if you
did something intentional which you now consider was incorrect (not in your long
range best interest), then it was still a kind of mistake (in judgement) when
you did it. I see no reason to continue to be ashamed of it, so long as you
acknowledge it and clearly state that it was wrong and you will endeavor never
to do it again. Acknowledgement (owning up to something - taking responsibility
for it) is *the* very first step towards removing all shame involved. --Paul]

[There are practices that are not unhealthy (physically, mentally or
emotionally) when done in the person's best interest using widest view, longest
range thinking, but which still have some strong cultural taboos related to
them. Lying, masturbating, sex outside of marriage are three that come
immediately to mind; prohibition against these are often ingrained in young
children without any exception.
There are other practices that can more readily be unhealthy to an individual,
but for which the tactics often used are ones to frighten (typically with
misinformation) or threaten (punishment) rather than simply providing truthful
information - tobacco, alcohol and recreational drug usage and homosexual
relationships are common ones. Whether any of these are "wrong" can be
determined only by the individual using wide view, long range thinking and not
in a blanket manner for everyone in all circumstances.

Another area of human interactions that many people find difficult to actually
discuss is romantic relationships. All sorts of images have been painted of what
is desirable in books, songs, movies, TV programming and advertising, and much
of it is very distorted from what is in the best interest of any widest viewing,
longest range thinking human being. This alone could be the subject for numerous
posts. **Kitty]


> [I'm readying a new essay for uploading to the Self-SIP Focus on
> Freedom section. Part of it includes:
> "Errors in judgment and damage caused to others by a child (or
> adult) are facts of reality which attempts to conceal will not cause
> to somehow "disappear". (One can not "unring a bell".) What can add
> to the assessment by others of an individual under those circumstances
> is the restitution action that was taken – was it completed to the
> satisfaction of the person harmed? When all circumstances are
> available for scrutiny, others would even be able to decide if the
> restitution amount was appropriate in their own estimation, and they
> could socially preference against someone whose demands were
> excessive. The full history of a person – the negatives included,
> especially when they served the individual hirself as a means of
> gaining knowledge and wisdom - can be learning tools for others,
> young, old and in between." **Kitty]

Reading books about peoples life histories could be useful in this regard.

[Yes, it can be if those books contain the "downs" and errors of a person's life
(with resulting wisdom gained) as well as the "ups" and accomplishments. And
even "ordinary" people's lives can be examples to others - if they let others
truthfully and completely know about themselves. **Kitty]


<snip by Olafur>

>>> 2) By using the word "can" in your phrase you did not specifically state
>>> that I "should" send you the files one at a time just that I "could" do
>>> it. Although it is quite obvious what you meant the fact that there are
>>> two ways of understanding this definitely is one of the reasons I did
>>> miss it.
>
>> The reason why I did not use "should" is because I have an aversion to
>> telling anyone what they should or should not do.
>
> I too try to avoid using the word "should" because by using
> it I am implying that I somehow know what is right or wrong for the
> person while the fact is that there is no right and wrong when
> talking about human behaviour, such statements are always a matter
> of subjective opinion.
>
> [This is close to being valid, but not quite. All human value
> judgments and decisions based on them are essentially subjective to
> the particular human involved. However, there are a few axioms of
> behavior which are inherent to being a human being in the sense that
> to not accept them is contrary to the essential nature of being human.
> The most important of these is that the goal of life is maximizing
> one's lifetime happiness. Another is that the method by which that
> goal is achieved is by the maximally effective use of one's mental
> faculties. Therefore, it is permissible to tell another person "you
> should want to maximize your lifetime happiness and you should reason
> and think most effectively in order to do so". It is only not
> reasonable to prescribe details about what specific behaviors will or
> will not make them happy. --Paul]

I fully agree with this.

<snip by Olafur>

>> Once again communication has been sabotaged by haste (on my part as well
>> as yours). Do you know the very wise phrase "haste makes waste"? Well
>> this has been a prime example - except that by our further analysis, we
>> have, hopefully, learned to be more careful in future, both in
>> constructing sentences and in reading them.
>
> I've heard the phrase "haste makes waste" somewhere before but
> I didn't know what it meant at the time since I didn't recognise the
> word haste. But now I realize (without looking it up) that it is
> derived from the word "hasten" which I recognise. And I have
> defiantly learned to be more careful in the future as a result of
> this discussion.
>
> [Good. But I think you meant to write "definitely" rather than
> "defiantly". But then being defiant is always good too :) --Paul]

Yes that's the word I meant to write, and I know how to write it so
I'm surprised that I somehow managed to write defiantly. It looks
like my fingers just hit the wrong keys.

>> The problem with the construction of sentences that cannot be
>> misunderstood is that in order to do this it seems that one needs to be
>> able to anticipate all of the possible ways in which a sentence can be
>> misunderstood, However, while there is only one right way (the meaning
>> that was intended by the writer), there are probably dozens of wrong
>> ways - many of which are very hard to imagine. I find this very
>> frustrating, and I sometimes despair of every being able to communicate
>> my ideas so that many people will understand them (I never even imagine
>> that *most* will),
>
> This is a problem with all languages today but Icelandic is
> far better than English in this regard.
>
> [I am beginning to think that although English is supposed to be a
> highly beneficial language for composition because of having so many
> words with subtley different nuances of meaning, for the the same
> reason English is highly prone to misunderstandings. Moreover, I think
> this is getting worse because people are both sloppily and
> intentionally misusing various words and, thus, giving many words
> meanings that they never had before and are actually unrelated or even
> quite contrary to the root meaning of the words. The kind of thing
> which in the novel "1984" was called "doublespeak" is now becoming
> the norm, particularly in social/political communications. --Paul]

Intentional misuse of words is getting more common in Icelandic too
but since it's simpler the possibilities of misuse are fewer than in
English.

>>> 3) Our recent discussion on attaching versus uploading files made me
>>> focus so much on your mention of sending the files as an
>>> "attachment" that I missed the rest of it. As soon as I had finished
>>> reading the sentence my focus was all on the attachment part, the rest
>>> of the phrase sort of went straight to my sub-contious mind.
>
>>That is also partly because the phrase about attachment was put last,
>>and therefore is what you most easily remembered, That is why the first
>>alteration above of my original sentence might have worked.
>
> Yes I think that definitely played a role too in this case.
>
>> BTW, I notice that you spelled "sub-conscious" incorrectly above. This
>> is probably because you are pronouncing it wrongly in your mind. The
>> first part of "conscious" is not pronounced like the first part of
>> "content", but instead the "sci" is pronounced like the word "she", so
>> the whole word is pronounced "con - she - us" although some people
>> shorten it to "con - sh - us".
>
> Actually I am well aware of how to pronounce it since I've
> heard it several times on TV. This is usually the case when I spell
> a word incorrectly in English, I know how it sounds I just don't know
> how to spell it. The problem here is that in English it isn't always
> easy to tell how a word is spelled by the way it's pronounced. In
> Icelandic on the other hand this is much easier. Take f.ex. the
> letter "a". There is a big difference in the way it sounds in the
> words "asparagus", "apple" and "ape". But in Icelandic the
> letter "a" always sounds almost exactly the same. It sounds very
> close to the "a" in "asparagus". The same is the case with all the
> other vowels in Icelandic, they all sound almost exactly the same in
> every word they appear in. This is just one example of how
> Icelandic is simpler than English in regards to pronunciation of
> words.
>
> I would like to mention that I use visual memory a lot when I'm
> writing in English. If I'm writing something I normally speak it in
> English in my mind and then proceed to write it. If I don't know how
> to spell a word I just try writing it anyways. Then using my visual
> memory I can often tell if the word is spelled wrong by simply
> looking at it.
>
> [Actually, this is not uncommon. I think most people do this to a
> certain extent. I remember when I was in high school, I had such good
> visual memory that I remembered French vocabulary by photographically
> recalling the images of the pages on which it sat in the text. I used
> similar techniques with some things in university, but generally not
> with math or science where I learned early on that the only long-term
> way to learn anything was by practicing using it sufficiently that it
> commited itself to an integrated place in my brain. --Paul]

My photographic memory is very good according to the photographic
memory part of an intelligence test I was sent to several years ago.
I learned a little German in high school and there are many German
words that still bring up a picture in my mind from the page in the
book from which I learned the word. And I agree, this is not a good
way to learn math and science in general.

> If I wrote the word incorrectly my visual memory usually tells
> me something is wrong with that word but I don't know what is wrong
> with it I just know that this is not the way it's spelled. This can
> be very frustrating as you can imagine. A trick I often use when
> this happens is to search for the word on Yahoo.com. Take f.ex. the
> word "subcontious" which is incorrect as you said. If I search for
> it on Yahoo not only do I only get 663 hits but at the top of the
> search results the notion "Did you mean: subconscious" appears
> indicating that the word is incorrect and that "subconscious" might
> be the word I was looking for. If I on the other hand search for
> the word "subconscious" I get 7100000 hits and no alternative
> suggestion. This alternative word suggestion feature of the Yahoo
> search engine has often helped me find how the word I'm after is
> spelled since often I have the pronunciation in my head but not the
> spelling.
>
> [Yes, Google search does the same thing. Also our unabridged Merriam
> Webster dictionary (costs a small subscription fee yearly) also does
> the same thing. In addition, if you use an email reader with a good
> spell checker it will tell you the appropriate spelling or suggest
> alternates. I find it really annoying that Yahoo does not have a spell
> checker for their group message composition. --Paul]

I always copy the MoreLife Yahoo group messages from the reply window
to a Microsoft Word document and then copy them back to the reply
window when I've finished my reply. And I always run the spell
checker prior to posting the messages.

>>>> As it worked out
>>>> there was no problem because my ISP was working well at the time that I
>>>> received the big email. I have now read them all and got what I wanted
>>>> from them.
>
> [The good news is that Kitty and I now have in Arizona a wireless
> broadband system which is actually faster than DSL. So finally we can
> do everything that we need on the Internet while receiving continuous
> streaming dance or classical music at the same time. And it only costs
> $30 monthly for only the six months we are in AZ. Now if only there is
> something similar available in Canada when we get back there next
> April, we will be all set. --Paul]

30$ a month is a lot cheaper than anything available here in Iceland.
The cheapest company here offers you unlimited download on a wireless
broadband connection for about 90$ a month. And it's the only company
here currently offering unlimited download. Just a year ago there was
no company in Iceland that offered unlimited download. These are some
of the negatives of living in such a small country.

[Unless the Icelandic government has permitted the company you mention to
operate a government protected monopoly, there is an opportunity for
enterprising individuals to compete by offering service at a lower rate. We are
not in a metropolitan area; in fact our house is too far away from the nearest
town to even have cable TV. The wireless is new to the area, and the very first
company that offered it about 4 years ago did not stay solvent; for some reason
it went broke. The company we have is owned and operated by someone with a fair
amount of experience in the Intenet service providing business including
wireless. When governments stay out of it, the market place operates just fine.
**Kitty]


> [Yes, it's really great to be listening to Energy98 via
> http://shoutcast.com and sometimes good dance stations from Europe
> while working online. ;>)
>
> One last thought on this thread between Paul and Olafur that Paul
> and I discussed at the time - if the two of them did not have such
> high regard for each other based on knowing each other well and having
> much the same values, such miscommunication of instructions could have
> escalated into annoyance by one or both. This sort of failure to
> understand what has been said or written is often the trigger of an
> annoyance episode (and more) between people who really do not know
> each other well, no matter how long they have dealt with each other.
> **Kitty]

This is so true. It's really nice to know someone so well as I know
you and Paul. Some might say I don't really know you since I haven't
even met you in person but that is not the important thing here. I
know the fundamentals of how you think and what your intentions are
and if anything you write to me seems to be in contradiction to the
way I know you I know it's most definitely a misunderstanding or a
mistake either on my behalf, yours or both.

[;>) **Kitty]
[:-) --Paul]