# lupine intention *The Urth list — 3 messages, 3 voices, 05 Jan 2011* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Lee Berman *05 Jan 2011, 20:38* > Jerry Friedman:Of course, this led me to the wrong conclusion (that there were never any abos > or Shadow Children), and when I learned I was wrong.... Jerry, I've noted there was a significant cadre in your camp before the Wolfe interview came to light. I assume it is WOlfe's words that made you decide you were "wrong". A couple conjectures: What if Wolfe had never said that in the interview. Then your theory of no abos/shadow children would be just as valid as the others floating around (one, some or all humans on the planets have been replaced). Right? You are as an intelligent person as anyone else here, so sans interview the evidence you found for your theory is as valid as anyone else's. Right? But Wolfe did say those words. So, whether by accidental blurting or by carefully plotted manipulation we have learned something: Wolfe does have a "right" answer in mind for at least some of his puzzles. (actually he has said as much in other interviews though he also says many answers are meant to be indeterminate). If it was by carefully plotting, I think he meant to tell us that on the mysteries with an intended solution, the right conclusion is usually going to be the one which is the creepiest, the most outrageous and fantastical. Sort of ("sort of.." I say) like an anti-Occam principle. In the real world I am a very skeptical, practical sort of person in understanding the world. But with the above I feel I was taught a lesson about how to understand the lupine universe. In a way it makes sense. I am not an author but I would think it would be a HELL of a lot more fun to write an outrageously creepy story and disguise it as mundane than to write a boring, mundane story and disguise it as horrific. This is the reason I always seek out the most fantastic answers to Wolfe puzzles and never sneer at amazing surprising stuff when proposed by others. I just have the sense that I have been instructed to do so by the author. And I find there are grains (and boulders) of truth in almost everyone's thoughts. Some attempt reductio ad absurdum on wild theories by implying that if such a theory is considered possible then ANY theory must be considered possible because all theories are then rendered equally crappy swill or whatever. For my part, if someone suggested a theory that was so wild it seemed to have no validity at all, I'd either ask a few questions or decline to comment. This rarely happens. I see intelligence, lupine familiarity and thoughtfulness in virtually all theories which have been proposed in recent times. I wish everyone could see that. --- ### Jerry Friedman *06 Jan 2011, 21:47 · in reply to Lee Berman* >> From: Lee Berman >> Jerry Friedman:Of course, this led me to the wrong conclusion (that there were >> never any abos >> or Shadow Children), and when I learned I was wrong.... > Jerry, I've noted there was a significant cadre in your camp before the Wolfe > interview came > to light. I assume it is WOlfe's words that made you decide you were "wrong". A > couple > conjectures: Quite right. > What if Wolfe had never said that in the interview. Then your theory of no > abos/shadow children > would be just as valid as the others floating around (one, some or all humans on > the planets have > been replaced). ... In first-person stories, a theory like that is hard to refute. Any evidence against it might have been planted by V. R. T. (Some will see this unfalsifiability as an argument against such theories.) So yes, maybe I'd still believe it. > But Wolfe did say those words. So, whether by accidental blurting or by > carefully plotted manipulation > we have learned something: Wolfe does have a "right" answer in mind for at > least some of his puzzles. > (actually he has said as much in other interviews though he also says many > answers are meant to be > indeterminate). > If it was by carefully plotting, I think he meant to tell us that on the > mysteries with an intended > solution, the right conclusion is usually going to be the one which is the > creepiest, the most outrageous > and fantastical. Sort of ("sort of.." I say) like an anti-Occam principle. ... As I said before, even if we adopt your principle, I think that's a matter of taste. What's creepier--that there are aliens on a planet who successfully imitate humans, or that there are only humans on a planet but some of them believe that the other people there are aliens, and we readers have been tricked into accepting insanity as reality? Or that all the sentient beings on the planet are aliens fooling each other, or that there are humans there accepting aliens as humans? Jerry Friedman > Some attempt reductio ad absurdum on wild theories by implying that if such a > theory is considered possible > then ANY theory must be considered possible because all theories are then > rendered equally crappy swill or > whatever. For my part, if someone suggested a theory that was so wild it seemed to have no validity at all, I'd either ask a few questions or decline to comment. This rarely happens. I see intelligence, lupine familiarity and thoughtfulness in virtually all theories which have been proposed in recent times. I wish everyone could see that. --- ### Dan'l Danehy-Oakes *06 Jan 2011, 21:50 · in reply to Jerry Friedman* > On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 1:47 PM, Jerry Friedman wrote: > As I said before, even if we adopt your principle, I think that's a matter > of taste. What's creepier--that there are aliens on a planet who > successfully imitate humans, or that there are only humans on a planet but > some of them believe that the other people there are aliens, and we readers > have been tricked into accepting insanity as reality? Or that all the > sentient beings on the planet are aliens fooling each other, or that there > are humans there accepting aliens as humans? And let us not forget: on an alien planet humans _are_ the aliens. I think that's a theme lurking in the background, amongst the colonial/postcolonial concepts. ``` Dan'l Danehy-Oakes ``` ---