Thoughts from dinner with the woman I live with who's going through seminary: Old Hebrew poetry, specifically what we see in the Bible isn't differentiated by meter or rhyme, it's exclusively defined by a specific type of information density -
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Biblically and generally, poetry was used often to communicate some of the most difficult, weighty, and controversial topics. What comparable means of communication (recognizable formatting, high info density, etc.) do we use often today?
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NGL the first thing that came to mind here is memes and viral formats for online content.
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I think there's something v beautiful & effective about how the common denominator in these formats is an exponential improvement in the clarity of language.
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Replying to @nwilliams030
I think they're less expansive than poetry though. (And I don't say that in a snobbish way — I'm not even a big poetry fan.) The you can get remarkable bandwidth from memes over deep shared structures, but I don't think it can let you convey partial messages like poetry does.
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Replying to @generativist
no yeah you're definitely right - i think that's part of what's intriguing to me.
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Replying to @nwilliams030 @generativist
Memes= easy onboarding, wide reach, narrow window of meaning Language (on avg)= medium onboarding, low reach, ambiguous meaning (highly contextual) Hebrew poetry= difficult onboarding, high reach, v specific meaning but highly custom **reach= ease of dispersion/virality (?)
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Replying to @nwilliams030
Hrm. Hot take / reaction: seems like a workable partition
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Replying to @generativist
wait - as in it is good? can i write a PhD on this
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Replying to @nwilliams030
Assuming you're dedicated and masochistic enough you can write a PhD on anything. And if you're smart and have the time/life to spend, you can defend a lot, too. Whether you would want to is a different question. And in our brief meeting, you seemed very...application motivated.
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(Also, my strong hunch from meeting you is that you are smart and generally dedicated. But, again, just not sure you'd be satisfied by the distance between now and then when where you get to build.)
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Replying to @generativist @nwilliams030
(Ugh, I'm bad at this type of advice. If it is something you are thinking about though, DM me any time ;))
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