[lbo-talk] Triple Your Lizard

[Carrol Cox]

shag quoted matt: "I do agree with Chris that other than the things that
are different, things are the same.  There is an infinite list of
generalizations which can be said prefaced with "other than...". 
Hopefully we don't need this much discussion to work all of them out."

To which she responded, quite cogently I thought, "yeah, i guess my
question was: who cares?"

Matt's problem is that he failed to notice he had committed the same
kind of error he charges Chris with  committing: that is, the
differences matt invokes are, like Chris' resemblances, infinite - and
there fore trivial until a particular difference is demonstrated to be
otherwise. Doug is worse. People interact and create a fresh culture!
That trivializes culture; if that is culture, then the concept is
useless.

Who cares about such an accumulation of trivialities stretching to
infinity? It needs to be shown that the differences being piled up (in a
cascade of mere anecdotage as Alan notes) are differences that make a
difference.

Carrol