From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson)
Subject: Re: Anti-Semitism (was Re: WARNING0
Organization: Madison Academic Computing Center, UW-Madison
Date: Sat, 17 Oct 92 03:58:37 GMT


In article <thaaang.719289117@cwis> thaaang@cwis.unomaha.edu
(John Dorrance) writes:

>Well, it appears I didn't know what I was talking about in
>regards to anti-Semitism.  I think I'll shut up now...

In that connection I have two things to say.  One is, apart
from rare, very rare, occasions, it would never be my
intention to shut anyone up.  As long as the flapping lips
are actively engaged with a thinking brain (a feat no one
manages perfectly all the time), I'm interested in hearing
what people have to say.  It's a two way street, of course,
and what one person says can (I think it usually does) lead
to an exchange benefitting those at both ends of the wire.

Naturally, quite a bit of experience is required, but in a
forum like this, I think something quite akin to regular
conversations regularly take place.  The tricks, tools, and
techniques of such exchanges are not inherently hard to
master, but rather just take a little practice and
experimentation to render the medium sufficiently
transparent.  For various people, naturally, this is
sometimes easier, sometimes harder.

THe other point I want to make is that there is no sin
whatever in not knowing something.  We are all quite
uninformed at birth, and I was thinking of adding a
postscript to the earlier posting about how frustrated I
often get that my education, my background, my experience,
and my basic tools for learning reveal to me so clearly how
little I know and how little I do or even can understand,
and I'm talking about things that are really important that
bear on real issues in the lives of everyone now living on
this enduring but fragile planet.  Compared to what one
would like to know, what one *does* know is a pebble in some
part of the Gobi where only insects and lizards have ever
walked in modern times.

Not to say one shouldn't stimulate oneself or be stimulated
by events or by others to expand one's own knowledge, the
only way to know really a lot about something is to quit
expanding in all areas but that one.  But there's a high
price for that, at least I think it's a high price; the
better you do at becoming *the* specialist, the fewer people
there are with the background to carry on an ordinary
conversation with you about that topic.  Think how few
people would have had much to say to Einstein in the time of
his greatest creativity.  It's a matter of taste and of many
circumstances, surely, but I've always been interested in
everything, and the reason I quit graduate school after 15
years of college was that Ifinally realized I didn't *want*
to be a specialist, even though I had superb training for
it, suitable interests, and the requisite talents.  It would
have cost too much in terms of everything else.

It was a decision I made in the social and political ferment
of 1968, and I've not regretted it for even 10 seconds in
the time since.  If anything, it greatly stimulated me and
expanded my life.  Life is what it is, no more and no less.
For that reason, I think people should spend almost no time
lamenting over what they don't know yet; rather, just get
busy.  And of course, it's great entertainment too.

-- 
Jess Anderson <> Madison Academic Computing Center <> University of Wisconsin
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