I'll go further than that. IMHO Garett Hardin's 1968 paper on the tragedy of
the commons, that appeared in Nature, excerpted at the URL below, indicates the
danger in ignoring the quantitative aspects of human activity:
http://www.free-eco.org/pub/FP/TragedyCommons.html
I don't make this reference casually. There are aspects of the common space of
xmca, that exchanges take up, that are very similar to the human consumption of
other renewable resources. I won't force anyone to subscribe to my view, and I
am grateful for the opportunity to share it.
bb
----------
--- Eva Ekeblad <eva.ekeblad@goteborg.utfors.se> wrote:
> At 01.40 +1000 01-08-14, Phil Graham quoted BB:
> >>Bringing the xmca writer rankings in line with Mandelbrot's derivation
> >>requires
> >>thinking that it costs less for the top writers than for those higher in
> >>numerical rank to write a message. In other words, it "costs less" for
> >>mike to
> >>write than Paul, and in turn Paul, than Diane, etc.
>
> ... and went on to say:
> >Hmmmm. I can't help being uncomfortable with a requirement to assume that
> >all such behaviours can be attributed to a cost/loss motivation which
> >implies an econometric perspective on what we do here and in other such
> >splaces.
>
> Well, the two of you taken together make a pretty good argument for why it
> might not be all that desirable to fit the distribution of xmca mail into
> Zipf-by-Mandelbrot. I don't know if Phil is also saying that no grid of
> maths should ever be cast over human affairs. Which I disagree with,
> because studying now and then how such casting works will, hopefully, leave
> me a little better prepared for all the nets of number cast over me by the
> Powers that Be.
>
> Eva
>
>
=====
"One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly become the author of something beautiful."
[Norman Maclean in "A river runs through it."]
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 01 2001 - 01:02:08 PDT