XP is paradoxical; everyone agrees that it is a pretty meaningless number,and yet (I am convinced of this) it is the key to the success of PM as a web-based community.

For the thermodynamically inclined, I offer this analogy: XP is not a state variable like energy or entropy; it is more like heat or work, in that only the "local" changes in it are meaningful (in the way they affect behavior); the net global sum of these local changes, by itself, is meaningless.

Or a more familiar analogy: XP fluctuations are the equivalent of the many smiles and frowns we get from people around us throughout the day; these gestures have an impact (often unconscious) on how we behave minute-to-minute and day-to-day, and in this respect they matter a great deal, but it would be foolish (or so I think anyway) to attach importance to some cumulative net number of smiles minus frowns that one has garnered through life, even if they were at all quantifiable.

the lowliest monk

In reply to Re: Zen and the art of ignoring XP by tlm
in thread Zen and the art of ignoring XP by DaWolf

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