Off at Tangents

Some of you may already know what the word 'electricity' stands for. If so, raise your leftmost hand and whisper in a gentle way: "Victory!" And if you're a mountain lion, well, that's not my problem anyhow.

"I can't think of anything funny to write here", the writer said, and his typewriter said the same.

While I certainly agree with your insightful remarks I can't help but point out that such references are merely logical and thus trivial constructions that can be formed on any material regardless of its semantic value. What comes to the typewriter, most often what comes to the typewriter from the typist comes to the typist from the typewriter.

The whole idea of predetermination is derived from the common misconception that events or moments naturally follow each other and that any moment n comes before the moment n+1 and after the moment n-1. However, if everything was predetermined, the predetermination would have had to happen before the first predetermined moment. Since this can't be the case, we must assume that every moment is determined not by the previous moment, but by some law that exists outside time and thus not before but above the first moment. Since this law L may always be derived from another law (L & (L -> L)) there is not one but several laws that govern the actual events (which may or may not follow each other, but which certainly are exactly what they are regardless of any other moment it may or may not follow). If this is indeed my tangential reply, it is so not because it bears a certain relation to the posts before it, but because it is what it is and thus cannot be otherwise.

Edited by Vompatti - August 12 2008 at 11:31

I think the minor element you're referring to is just the fact that the tangential post follows (i.e. is situated below) the previous post, which makes the occasional glancer of the thread pay particular attention to the contrast between those two posts. This contrast, if unusual, makes the latter post tangential. However, and I can't stress this enough, what makes the relation between the tangential post and the post before it more important than the relation between any two random posts is the definition of 'tangential', which only applies to a post that is in an unusual contrast with the post before it. It's worth noting that this doesn't require the latter post to be a "reply" of any kind. (It does require, however, that the tangential post appears after a certain post). If I posted something without reading the previous post, my post could still be tangential, but only with the post before it, not, for example, a randomly chosen post from another thread. But, if I can post a tangential post without reading the previous post, it must be so that the previous post does NOT determine the content of the tangential post anyhow.

If the goal of tangential posting is indeed to gradually steer away from the original subject, we may only ask: "How big steps are we allowed to take? As big as John Coltrane?" Surely it's not allowed to only frivolously refer to the previous post and then move on to another subject like bunny rabbits. We must maintain some kind of close relation to the previous post while at the same time intentionally yet unnoticeably bringing up another related subject. The problem here is that any two things that can be expressed in one language are somehow related, and there is no objective way to tell how close the relation is. John Coltrane and bunny rabbits, for example, seem to be pretty unrelated unless you happen to be a person who used to have a bunny rabbit named John Coltrane. This problem of relation brings to question the whole concept of tangentiality. If we have no way of telling how strong the relation between two posts are, how can we tell if they're tangential? Someone may think this could be settled by making a list of every pair of things and giving their relation a fixed numeric value, which can then be used in a function that determines how strong the relation between two posts are. It's obvious that calculating the value of this function would be an immense task, since we would have to relate every thing in the first post the every thing in the second post. The main problem, however, is more profound: how can we tell which things are discussed in a given post? A list of words won't be enough, since there are words that refer to several things. 'Duck' for example, is both a bird and a certain action of bending down. Someone may think that since the meaning of 'duck' can easily be picked by looking at the sentence it appears in, we should only consider that one meaning. This we can not do for the simple reason that the word 'duck', even if we know it's used as a noun, may bring to mind the verb 'duck'. The word 'duck' can, in fact, be used in a pun, so that it refers to its both meanings. But if we're really considering everything that appears in a certain post, we should not only look at the words, but the sentences also. It's obvious that different combinations of words (and different combinations of sentences) create new meanings, new "things" are discussed in the post. So if we make a list of every word and every combination of words, is it enough? No. It would give us a way to tell if two posts are tangential, but the results would be unreliable because the method would be wrong. We can't just assume that the word 'duck' refers to a certain thing. Someone who has never heard of ducks (imagine a person born on the Antarctica) may use the word 'duck' to refer to an imaginary creature with four wings and a metallic tail. If he wrote a post that's supposed to be tangential, it would be obvious that we would not be able to derive the thing he refers to with the word 'duck' from our listed meanings of 'duck'. Also, we cannot say that he is using the word the wrong way and we're using it the right way. We could say: "The right way to use the word 'duck' is to use it to refer to a bird (we'd describe the bird here) because that's the meaning given in our list of words and their meanings." But, if we took a look at our list of meanings, how would we be able to tell, what the words there mean? "Does this 'duck' refer to the word 'duck' that I use to describe a certain bird, or does it refer to another word 'duck' that's used to describe a creature with four wings and a metallic tail?" There would be no way to tell.

Edited by Vompatti - August 13 2008 at 04:15

So... there is a reason for cheese.

Thanks a lot for ruining my charade! Next time, I'll assure you, you'll have to face my synchronized shrubbery fortification.

"Lisa, that's a lot of rich creamery butter"

Oh well, at least I tried.