rattus rattus’ blog

2008-06-07^*), Oswald Wiener gave a talk with the title “Der Automaten-Begriff als Werkzeug der Erkenntnispsychologie”. When he spoke about the Würzburg School he quoted several of their test questions which they used in psychology experiments. One of them was:

Do you agree with the following statement?
— We condemn everything that can be explained.

According to Wiener, if the test person answered “yes” she or he was asked to explain by means of introspection which thoughts etc. led to the affirmation.

*) For those who know the delicate history, his talk was given in Hs. 1 of the “NIG” at University of Vienna.

If there were secrets do they need to be secrets?
If a secret does not need to be a secret it will not be a secret anymore. I believe in secrets which is why I do not try to reveal them. Is this why magicians never reveal their tricks? Magicians’ tricks are their reality. Moreover, they are their tools to manufacture reality (and not just someone else’s). Are they tricks at all?

However, yes, I wonder what the tricks of life are, too. — Love? Love is just part of it. I dared to look further. Until I stopped looking.
Once you look through and you see clearly what is going on, you see what was hidden behind or underneath. You don’t see what there was. You see something new.

It’s like you start loving another man or woman once you begin to understand the one in front of you. Maybe this is what LaBute meant when he said one should not ask why when “what” is in front of oneself?

There are secrets. Do we need to reveal them? Or should we just try not to try?

“You are off the edge of the map, mate. Here there be monsters!”

Where are the maps that show us how to approach the secrets of life?
I guess, I like monsters.

What is the secret? Can you keep it?

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[This entry was originally posted 2008-05-28. It was re-done, updated, and expanded 2008-06-07.]

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A well-known double bind is the request

Be spontaneous!

A friend of mine recently put a neat twist on it by wrapping it up in a question:

You are spontaneous, aren’t you?

The many facets of self-contradictory statements sure understand to entertain a (free) liar’s heart. I replied:

Of course, I am so much spontaneous that I am already spontaneously spontaneous.

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On April 1, Jennifer Kyrnin featured a wonderful online poll in her About.com weblog Jennifer’s Web Design/HTML Blog:

Poll: Are you willing to answer online polls?

Vote now and see the results :-)

This hoax was a hoax. A pretty serious one.

Apparently, some people just cannot accept criticism.

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She asked what I meant when I said “friend”.

I replied that I never mean anything in particular.

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For Katharina

The most annoying aspect of annoying people is that it’s still you who gets annoyed. Nobody knows better to annoy you than you yourself.

And as far as I am concerned I am an expert.