[FRIAM] better simulating actual FriAM

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Interesting. I completely reject that dichotomy. It sounds as if he (or whoever would NOT be driven crazy by such a thing) is either 1) making some psychological mistake or 2) is executing some sort of attention-slicing algorithm. The psych mistake would be akin to thinking multi-tasking actually happens, which it does not, in anyone ... ever. >8^D

So, if I give him the benefit of the doubt, I'll accuse him of (2), which I do all the time. E.g. when I got EricS's 607 page doorstop, I jumped right into the middle of chapter 7. That line of thought I am on ran its course and I'm jumping out, without finishing chapter 7, and I plan to move on to some other part. *While* doing that, I'm still reading "Ignorance" and I've read maybe 6 other papers on various different things (the most interesting was on actual vs potential infinities and whether or not we can do 2nd order math over potential infinities). That is attention-slicing. None of it stoops to "pastime". If I had such a thing as a "pastime", it would be drinking alone in my basement ... but luckily you can only do that so much before it kills you.

I've heard tell of people enjoying "idle talk", "gossip", and such. But I've never experienced it ... nor would I enjoy it.

On 7/17/20 3:56 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
> Now, to understand what I mean by real, one has to make a distinction that Eric Berne made between pastimes and real communication.  Pastimes are ways of interacting, often highly repetitive, which are vaguely dedicated to purposes like making nice, and enhancing reputations, distracting one from problems, etc., where the matters being talked about are not really central and nobody is trying to figure out anything or change anybody's mind about anything.  In a real conversation, there is something explicitly that we care about, some ball that we are trying to move forward.   I know lots of people like pastimes.  Dozens of parties are held every year (or used to be) to which all the participants would come, hoping to engage in their favorite pastimes.  Unfortunately, along with the one math gene I got from my brother, I also got one of his Asperger's genes.  Such parties drive me right raving nuts.  I think the best way to distinguish a pastime from a real conversation is to ask oneself, is anything at issue here, and are we actually talking about it, rather than skirting it.

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