From: zagar@chester.cms.udel.edu (Randy Zagar)
Subject: Re: Various ramblings...
Reply-To: zagar@chester.cms.udel.edu
Organization: Marine Studies, University of Delaware
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 14:08:10 GMT

In article 21700@menudo.uh.edu, kevin@nuchat.sccsi.com (Kevin Brown) writes:
>
> It would be nice, of course, if I had a full understanding of
> relationships (or anything else, for that matter :-), but I'll settle
> for a partial, but good enough, understanding.
>

ALERT! ALERT! MAJOR COSMIC TRUTH! ALERT! ALERT!

Kevin, NOBODY had a 'full' understanding of relationships.  And if someone
tells you differently watch them carefully, they probably have a bridge they'd
like you to buy.

>
>> People, through observation,
>> through trial and error, and with a bit of luck, build there own
>> models of how relationships work, for them.  Their model undoubtably
>> has more holes than swiss-cheese, but it only has to work a small
>> fraction of the time to be sucessful.  
>
> How do you tell the difference between them succeeding as a result of
> their model being right and succeeding purely by chance?  If their
> successes are so limited, why are they bothering with the model at
> all?  Peace of mind or something?
>

One possible way is to look at how long the 'relationship' lasts.  If it
only lasts a short time, then their 'model' probably wasn't very good.

It just occured to me that saying you have a good 'model' about relationships
is equivalent to saying that you have (some) wisdom in this area.  All this
stuff we've been saying about good model/bad model can probably be said better
by talking about being wise/foolish regarding relationships.

>> The unfortunate problem
>> with these models, is that they're are not often transferable,
>> especially to someone as different as apparently you are.  This means
>> your pretty much on your own, and you're going to need to do a lot
>> of experimenting to find out what works for you. 
>

I'm not even sure that the term 'model' is appropriate here.  From what I can
figure out, the more time we spend on an activity the better get at it.  And not
because we understand it intellectually, but that we've built a better _intuitive_
understanding of what works and what doesn't.  It's more of a gut-level feeling
than anything else.

Now if something gets screwed up along the way, we can certainly look back and
_intellectually_ examine the mistake (and maybe even learn from it) but there
doesn't seem to be any reliable way of predicting what's going to happen.

Actually, I think this discussion might actually improve if we discarded phrases
like 'model', 'odds', and 'statistics'.  What we're really talking about here is
experience.  None of this is quantitative.  Using formal language only misleads
us into believing we can be 'scientific' about it.  And statistics aren't going
to help you understand things in particular cases.

This whole business of refining the 'model' is just becoming wiser through your
experience.  And I can't *explain* _my_ wisdom to someone else.  Even if I could,
it probably wouldn't help you very much, because your perceptions and reactions
are different from most peoples'.

-Randy

 _____________________________________________________________________________
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| Randy Zagar                            Get your priorities straight.        |
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| Bell-net: 302/831-1139                 "Gee, if I'd only spent more time    |
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