GRAVITY THREE -- Friday, September 18, 1992

Bless you Steven Goldman: "If you feel that 'justification' is scary, I
feel that 'true' is; 'belief' is merely opaque."

You picked up on one of the scariest words of all: truth. Yes, it's a
frightening word to use, but oddly enough I'm more at ease using it
than "knowledge". That's because I don't usually mean "truth" in the
"factually correct" sense.

As a character in my novel writes: "TRUTH IS A LIE UNLESS IT'S ALIVE AND IN THE SAME ROOM WITH YOU. ALL AROUND THE CONFUSED AND THE CERTAIN LOOK TO THE LIKES OF ME TO SET THEM STRAIGHT, TO GIVE THEM WORDS THEY CANNOT FIND THEMSELVES. WHAT A LIAR I AM. HOW COULD I EVER KNOW?"

This kind of truth is the harmonic resonance kind, as when you say
something "rings true". There is of course the QED-justification sense of the word. I wonder sometimes whether or not this latter kind of truth ever really convinces anyone.

Or so says the novelist in me. Tonight I'm a novelist, which isn't a high
and mighty thing, though I have done some work. I'm up to 150 pages with it, or 23000 words since December. Lots of revision, at least an hour each day. Lots of reflection time. Lots of scary attempts at truth.

While I'm in this area of my semantic net, the area prone to being
sincere, and grateful, I'd like to truthfully thank those still with me.
I've lost eight, and gained four, of my audience. Those still with me will
now receive a few clues as to what really lies ahead in this discussion.

I'm writing these notes because of some things that really scare me. I
keep talking about "terminal cases of the willies" and that may sound cute, but make no mistake, I feel geniunely afraid sometimes. I feel afraid of apathy. It scares the hell out of me how little people care about things. I feel afraid of specialization. We can't understand each other anymore. I feel afraid of self-congratulation. Pride is a sure-fire ticket to trouble.

Now I hope I've just hit some chords among you. I'm playing this audience for a reason. I truly believe in the idea of a University, and I'm geniunely grateful to many of you for making my life brighter. Teaching is a wonderful and difficult profession. You've made a difference to me. These notes are my feeble attempt to give something back.

There have been times when my fears have given way to what seems like a solution, and the information representation, communication, and
manipulation scheme I'm discussing is just part of it. There's another
kind of gravity I'm aiming at as well, and it has much to do with this
specialization fear of mine.

That's all. I'm afraid today was all sauce.
Tomorrow I'll talk about Gravity items.