Urth Net
Fingers (Adam) and Lamarckstuff (Dan)
↰ answers Dan Parmenter
· by quotation
Adam observes:
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So your argument is that the characters who are portrayed on the surface as paunchy men/women in business suits disguised as the Queen, Hook, and Wolf are really the Queen, Hook and Wolf disguised, or manifesting themselves as, paunchy men/women in business suits disguised as the Queen, Hook, and Wolf?
More like the latter. Paunchy folks in business suits are the villains in the version of reality in which Mauss lives and works, so when these villain-archetypes enter that version of reality, that's how they appear.
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So where does this leave your earlier contention that "sometimes a pipe is just a pipe"?
Good question. It all seemed so clear at first...
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And Dan Parmenter wrote:
Subject: Substitute me for him, substitute my coke for gin...
Not a chance, Dan. I may ask myself, "Why did I fall for that," but we won't get fooled again.
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From: "Dan'l Danehy Oakes" <DDANEHYO at us.oracle.com>
The same holds true, to a lesser extent, for many prelinguistic animals -- cats and birds can readily be seen teaching their offspring how to perform various survival-oriented activities.
And if that skill is not acquired during a particular phase of development, it is never acquired. Kittens never taught to hunt can coexist with pet mice without the slightest problem.
Right. Sturgeon was fascinated by this stuff -- he called it a "window" in some stories published in the late '70s, by analogy with a "launch window" or "window of opportunity." Language in particular seems to be "windowed" in humans; the occasional feral child never really learns language if brought back to human society beyond a certain age ("three" sticks in my mind but that's probably too old).
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...What if the
shape-shifting ability (to whatever extent it exists)
...I'm beginning to lean toward the idea that it doesn't, that there are no abos (left) at all...
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is like language
- a characteristic of the species the particulars of which
must be realized during a "critical stage" of their development. All abos have the capacity to shape-shift but if its "parameters" aren't set (through parental/societal examples and interactions, as with language) the knack is never fully realized and such abos are like the examples one hears about occasionally of children raised in severely abusive isutations where they aren't allowed to interact and learn language (e.g. Kaspar Hauser). Such abos would have limited or nonexistant shape-shifting ability and no ability to use tools.
Interesting. By the more-or-less standard model, poor or no tool using ability seems to be endemic to abos even when they're raised among their own kind...
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