**most recently edited on 5/10/2013**
you might be thinking, "well, what does that say about you?" and you'd be almost right; i've accepted the truth about myself and my dork nature; still, i'm not a geek.
just so we're all clear, my personal definitions of geek, nerd, and dork are as follows:
-a geek is someone who is extremely into something; the thing could be anything: baseball geeks are just as plausible as computer geeks.
-a nerd is someone who is a math or science geek, which is often accompanied by above average intelligence and/or an inability to relate to others; you'll notice that by this definition, nerds are a subset of geeks.
-a dork is someone who isn't afraid to (or doesn't know any better than to) let his/her geekiness or nerdiness shine.
sometimes jeff and i have difficulty executing a "normal" conversation (i expect this is typical among dorks and geeks hanging out together). specifically, we have the tendency to be a bit particular about extent in our conversations, even when it seems unnecessary or ridiculous, or both ("on a scale from the best thing you've ever tasted to the best thing you ever thought you could taste, where does this lie?"). alas, that's us in a nutshell, especially together - ridiculous.
jeff and i first started hanging out to fill a music-sized void in our lives, but the amount of time we spent together increased rather quickly. one of the best things about being a dork/geek is that doing essentially nothing is considered a way--even a preferred way--to have a good time. we would hang out with no agenda and just let the conversation take us wherever it could go, which would inevitably lead at least one of our arguments of extent.
now, when i say argument (do i, by any chance, mean... argumanatee? nevermind...), i mean it in the least loaded way: a discussion governed by logic for the purpose of attempting agreement. there was never any hostility...mild vigor at most.
packed with plenty of such arguments, our conversations lasted for arbitrarily long periods of time, with tangents, and tangents from tangents, even such that remembering original points was often nontrivial. on and on, around and around we would go, spiraling into our point, which was not necessarily of any real importance. these discussions were fascinating to us, if for nothing more than their absurdity and our conviction to them. for not us, however, they were about as entertaining as listening to two halves of a conversation in two different foreign languages. except for the rare instance of getting so absurd that we were actually amusing to listen to--or even just to hear: "i feel like i look like i feel like he looks like he feels when he says that" (jeff has channelled dr. seuss on many occasions), our conversations mostly had the effect of being boring for everyone else. this effect became especially pertinent when, eventually, we were regularly joined by my now-wife, whom we'll call "lizzie." lizzie is a little bit dork and geek (and nerd) actually, but to a significantly lesser extent in the respective cases, so for her, little of what we said mattered, or even made any since for that matter.
so much to lizzie's dismay, jeff and i slowly trudged onward, determined not to miss a thing, regardless of the importance of said thing or the difficulty in communicating it. at the same time, jeff and i consequently began to develop better-than-average understandings of each other's perspectives on various subjects, as well as ideas not far removed from those subjects. furthermore, the scatter-shot of topics involved began to span a rather large space in our minds, thus we began to really get each other, in a way that usually requires years of close friendship. it was almost as if we were actively learning to be friends with each other, rather than just waiting for it to happen naturally (though it could be easily argued that, for us, this was "natural").
after just a few months, it was as if we had been friends for years. additionally, given that we are graduate students in physics, most of the understanding we gained for each other was highly tailored to the quantitative nature of our academic circumstances. it was more like the hypothetical strong bond you would form with a coworker, if only there were a better reason than "we work together" to desire such a thing. in more obvious terms, the depth of our friendship was highly specialized.
this unusual bond, and our continued persistent quest to cover any new ground which revealed itself in our antics eventually led to what i have to believe is a rather unique phenomenon. consider for a moment, the inner-workings of communication between two individuals: the whole point of you and i communicating is for me to pass some idea, mental picture, etc from my mind to yours or vice versa; theoretically, it's a simple matter of information exchange, right?
but i said "theoretically." we all know from experience that sharing what's on our minds can range from easy enough to virtually impossible. half the time i don't understand what's on my own mind, much less can i share it effectively. i see this as one of the fundamental dilemmas of being human.
which brings me back to my point: the connection jeff and i went on to form has given us the ability to systematically minimize information loss in our communication. as long as the subject is sufficiently related to prior conversation, each of us can hand over any idea in mind to the other, virtually unscathed. it's not always quick or easy, but it works beautifully, often with staggering precision.
that said, the process by which we went from {beginning to poorly utilize crude versions of this method} to {actually being systematic} was a long and treacherous one. i'll spare you the gory details (sadly the same can't be said for jeff or lizzie), but i will tell you about the most interesting consequence of that process; indeed, it is my main purpose! derived from a "discovery" of mine and an unrelated happy accident or two--not to mention years of perseverance in exploring the depths of communication and the mind, the manatee is both the main subject of this blog and the most important tool of the process of optimal communication. the story of it's birth is my next and last point of prologue.
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