My apologies for that. I'm not very artful with words, and get misunderstood a lot in these forums, so the length is probably a preemptive defense mechanism and my feeble attempt to be precise. (Looks like it still failed though... Maybe longer next time will help?
)
The warnings about not getting to excited about birds / not getting hopes up is that we have seen multiple occasions where people have done just that and then gotten very angry when the thing they were expecting didnât happen.
We may have to agree to disagree on this one. The angriest that I have ever seen people get was the reaction by some parts of the building community to the South East Asia Pack. And yet these "warnings" very seldom seem to appear in the threads that are builder-focused or builder-specific.
That
selective use of the warning trope -- as a recurring impulse that we need to control the reactions of some parts of the community (but seldom the parts that I saw get the angriest) -- is what I object to. And is a dynamic that I choose not to participate in.
Because I don't believe that the warnings are merely there to altruistically manage hopes and expectations, whether someone else's or our own. They're also a way of setting hopes and expectations, of limiting hopes and expectations, of enforcing hopes and expectations, and -- importantly -- of prioritizing
other hopes and expectations at the expense of these. (Like the hopes and expectations in the very threads that never receive and supposedly don't need such warnings, perhaps).
To be clear, I don't think that people are doing that consciously or intentionally. Much of it is internalized dynamics and internalized conditioning. But that's also the whole point. In a discussion of what people think we might get, our impressions of what's possible aren't
really being based on what's mechanically possible, or on a careful reading of the wish list, or on any other objective calculation that we try to apply. They're based on this very assumption that birds are the
type of feature which requires these selective warnings!
In other words, we don't really believe that we need these selective warnings because birds are actually any less likely than any sandbox option or building request or anything else. We've come to believe that birds are less likely
because we have been conditioned to accept these selective warnings here, but not in those other places.
who said we definitely arenât getting birds?
Huh? Every recent post has said the opposite - that it's entirely possible, it's just that we don't think it's happening.
Absolutely fair! And actually very helpful for better enunciating the point I'm trying to make! I amend every reference to "not getting birds" to read "the reasons people give for why they are doubting, explaining, justifying, speculating, or fearing that we won't get birds". (Although, I do worry that inserting that phrase over and over is going to make that essay even longer).
I think what I was trying (and apparently failing) to do was less respond to the specifics of any recent post, but to note how the recent posts fit into the larger trajectory that this conversation has taken over time. To look at where we are in the context of where we've been, and where we're going. Or even better yet, where we
could go if we start to shift our assumptions and perspective.
I feel like I really do remember a time (long long ago, in a galaxy far far away....) when the mechanics of flight really was one of the primary reasons that people gave when they said they doubted we'd get birds. That's what I was referring to in that quoted section. And you are quite right that the recent posts in this thread have very helpfully changed that conversation, and I thank you for that!
But in making clear that the mechanics are no longer a sufficient reason for our doubt (if they ever were to begin with) -- to the point where the exact opposite -- the certainty and already achieved status of (some of) those mechanics -- is now being used again as an opposite reason for why some doubt that we'll get birds -- we have to ask if we've really had any real change in our perspective?
It begs the question of
why so many people are still worried that birds wont happen. Really, deep down. Of how we became conditioned to believe that, and by whom. Of why so many of us are judging that according to a different standard or bar than any other requested feature that hasn't happened yet.
If we've already spent the time to dig this deeply into the mechanics -- only to discover that polar opposite mechanical answers still leave people in the same place of doubt and selective warning about birds -- then don't we owe it to ourselves to continue digging to discover what the actual source of that doubt and selective warning is? If the recent posts have indeed been enough to convince us that it's technically possible, why do we still linger in the same place that we were before we had those insights? If the first half of the proposition has changed (we now think it's possible), why hasn't the second half of the proposition changed consequently (we still think it's not happening)? And how might we overcome this as the next stage of our investigation?
A very long essay to rebut a point no one has made
Or perhaps, with your helpful amendments, a very long essay to rebut a series of assumptions that
everyone seems to be making. And trying to discover why we keep making them.
