From: Jeff McAffer Subject: SOC: truth and reality (was: "nanosex") Organization: Dept. of Info. Sci., Fac. of Sci., U. of Tokyo, Japan In article <25m8p5$jbt@news.u.washington.edu> Max Garcia writes: >I've always felt that there is a difference between truth and reality. >While someone could argue that evidence would prove empirically that >men are more visual (a truth?), what is the cause (a reality)? In I agree! It may be the case that women of today are less visually oriented (whatever that really means) but it does not follow that the female of the species is inherently this way. Similar situations are all around us. Constructions of society. While it is conversatoinally convenient to say things like "X (women) are Y (visual cripples)" we must always remember that it need not necessarily be this way. One of my biggest fears is that we will drag many (all) of our warped and twisted societal concepts into our created realities. Think about it. Most of the things we accept today are there because of some force in the "natural" world. These forces need not exist at all in our worlds (though some are useful) Time and color are just two examples of societal constructions which permeate our lives and minds so thoroughly we don't even think about them. Complete construction. Why do I fear this? First because I don't like alot of society's models (the ones about women are fine examples). Secondly, doing this will make created realities really hard to do. They will have to adhere to the societal conventions. Realism. As I see it, there are two general categories of generated worlds; ones in and out of which people pop from their "real" lives. A sort of life augmentation. Work, play, nan demo ii. The second is something profoundly different where the rules of the physical world are largely thrown out. Data and people are piers. Complete construction. I don't think it would be easy to pop in and out of this but it might be a very interesting place. Anyway, excuse me, I digress. -- ato de, |m -- My favorite things have all colors yet I see none of them.