"Realistic fiction leaves out too much." - Gene Wolfe

Jeff Wilson · 01 May 2011, 16:31 · from 2011-May.txt.gz

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From: jwilson at io.com (Jeff Wilson)
Date: Sun, 01 May 2011 11:31:30 -0500
Subject: (urth) "Realistic fiction leaves out too much." - Gene Wolfe
In-Reply-To: <4DBD4D36.7030609 at verizon.net>
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Message-ID: <4DBD8AE2.1020701 at io.com>

On 5/1/2011 7:08 AM, David Stockhoff wrote:
> Is it impossible? I had no idea. ;)

If your freedom to swing your arm doesn't end where my nose begins, 
obviously my nose is harmed for the benefit of you getting to swing your 
arm as you like.

If we agree to limit the freedom to swing our arms where the noses of 
others begins, there's no check on the the proliferation of noses and 
one day I am harmed by the atrophy of my arms because there's no room to 
swing them at all.

We could compromise on a minimum arm-swinging radius, but this harms 
armless people by reducing their nose-room while they obviously get no 
benefit from more arm room.

And so on.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
< http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >

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