[ExI] Singular vs Group mind(s) [was: Second Life]

[Mike Dougherty]

On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 11:19 AM, Natasha Vita-More <natasha at natasha.cc> wrote:
> Why are you disagreeing with Anna or me? Please read posts carefully before
> responding and please respond to the post with which your content relates.

I have wondered how people conceive of list-served email threads.  It
seems the identity of each poster becomes a nuance of the "other" who
is not the reader.  Obviously each of us has our own ideas, but those
with a tendency to argue for argument's sake often conflate different
posters.  I assume it belies the mental shortcutting that everyone on
a list comprises a singular list entity with which the disagreement is
maintained.  Conversely, it seems that on topics with general
agreement people take less time time to expound on similar concepts
because it is assumed that everyone already feels the same - after
all, we share the list-mind via membership.

This concept grows in complexity if other lists are included.  My
singular self deals with the group-mind comprised of all the lists to
which I am subscribed.  If I forget the context of one list-centric
thread and refer to it on a different list, I have committed a faux
pas of list etiquette.  Do that imply that my viewpoint can be
described as the intersection of the various group-minds (sets) which
has only this singular member?  Can I convince others to join my
"camp"?  Would that be considered an escalation to group-mind by
increasing the number of members in the set?  Is set the wrong
mathematical construct for modeling this concept?  Would population
distribution be a better metaphor?  Thoughts?