allergy to detergent

I've been having a weird pain in the skin of my hands for the past week or so... red spots my palms, very dry peeling fingertips.

I'm hoping it's an allergy... even though my blood doesn't seem to be allergic to any of the common allergens. I suspect the dish-washing detergent.

I wonder if I should see a doctor about it.

This reminds me that in 2000, I got hives all over my body for an unknown reason... and had to be on cortisone for a couple of weeks. Coincidentally or not, it was the middle of summer too.

bondage_and_tea, logical cognitive models for autism

I just had a long email thread with bondage_and_tea about the feasibility and desirability of logical cognitive models for autism. It took us 24 emails.

We were talking past each other for a while, because:
* we have different goals (e.g. I'm happy with models that predict, whereas he requires models to give developmental explanations)
* we use different language (e.g. the words "suspect", "explanation")
* pragmatics doesn't come across well through the text medium (e.g. it's not always obvious when a question is rhetorical). At some points, I was frustrated and tempted to be rude, but I held it back. He probably felt the same way. The smiley faces helped keep the discussion amicable. (being rude in person isn't as big a deal because you can see the general attitude in the person's face)
* I was being socratic, while he was focusing on concrete examples, asking if I had any references to back up my claims of possibility.

This is an example of successful email communication. And probably the one that took the longest to resolve for me. It was hard, but we finally understand why the other person believes what they believe... although it would have been easier on IM.

I've been meaning to write about Internet communication and its dangers, but that will have to be another time.

Just remember: Great Minds Think Alike (GMTA), and if you give people the benefit of the doubt, it may turn out that you agree afterall. I know that most pairs of people have tons of persistent disagreements, but most people are just not great minds :-) (seriously, I wish this combination of critical thinking + charitable argumentation were taught in school).