I'm finding a lot of striking parallels here.  The search for the grasp of what the numbers are doing has a surprising similarity to some of the headier times during the search for the Lost Adams Diggings.  The flashes of insight, the anticipation of putting theory to the test, the unexpected discoveries of unrelated, but satisfying and fulfilling bits and pieces.

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That's what I'd label the best of all this.

On the other hand, as I've mentioned in an earlier blog entry, there's cause to think the down-side of sharing innormation outweighs the returns by a long shot.  I suspected it before I ever began doing it here, remembering hard lessons learned doing the same thing on Treasure Hunting forums a decade ago.

If my old friend and partner, Mel was alive he would be laughing with bitter satisfaction at me now, telling me he warned me.  It really used to piss him off, all the innormation I'd post on those treasure hunting forums.  "You don't share what you know with strangers," he'd say.  "You won't get anything back out of it.  They don't know enough to be any help to you.  And you stand a good chance of losing everything you've worked for."

When I began posting the Strange Experience thread I really just threw it out there intending to find out if anyone else had experienced anything similar.  But it sparked some exchanges, early on, causing me to believe some mutual growth of understanding might come out of sharing innormation.

Instead, the thread grew into a series of semi-evangelical monologues with me posting all but the most crucial pieces of the puzzle, becoming a sort of celebration of discovery, but with me dancing alone in the process.  I allowed myself to barely notice the fact the thread was getting a lot of readers, but if anyone was joining the investigation, they weren't sharing whatever they found.

I'm prepared to accept the charitable view that a lot of the reason people weren't joining the thread as dialogue was merely because they weren't deeply enough into it to discover anything.  On the other hand, maybe they were simply curious, not actually getting anything from it, but reading it to pass the time.

In retrospect, the only serious return I've seen on the thread was the post by Alonzo containing a vague hint of the most important key to the process, which was worth the price of admission to the entire dance.  Otherwise, I'd have to call the thread a waste of time.

I'd have missed that post by Alonzo if I hadn't been posting to the thread, but that was some time ago, and there have been a lot of shared discoveries since then with nothing coming back.  I'd have to judge that everything on that thread following Alonzo's post would qualify as affirmations of Mel's point of view regarding the sharing of innormation with other treasure hunters. 

If the thread was going to result in any helpful insights by others, it was clearly placed on the right forum.  The people who read and post there, at least, are already accustomed to thinking outside the boxes.  But, the fact is we all think inside boxes.  The Mystical Forum people have merely moved their boxes outside the common boundaries and rebuilt them.  The ones on the software development and general lottery end of things have constricted their thinking so far they probably just aren't capable of contributing anything that doesn't echo what someone else has done.

I observed on an earlier blog entry that treasure hunters and lottery enthusiasts aren't long on sharing innormation.  I'd say that's worth repeating, but maybe in both instances most of the people involved just don't have anything worth sharing.

Jack