Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

While you stress the value of ambiguity of meaning in the article, the answer to your DOEP seems to be "when the object being 'meaninged' no longer is distinguishable from anything else". In other words, when ambiguity reaches 100%, leaving no "it" to "it".

There may be a lower threshold but this is certainly a maximum level of "meaning". Most tangible things are unlikely to reach this level but even some of them could be [mis]treated this way: creeping and crawling things, clouds, cellphones, and bosses as examples due to perceived attributes and prejudices.

"...[G]ood TV series... are able to turn out high quality products week after week with a variety of writers and directors. And they're made under far worse time pressure. Why are movies so much more inconsistent? Why are movies so often so bad?"

The kicker here might be comparing movies to *good* TV series. "...[T]he mortality rate of new [TV] shows is over 75%," so there is a Darwinian winnowing process that produces what you see on the small screen. On the other hand, a movie is most similar to a TV pilot film, a one-off project, and we all know what happens to projects:
"Roughly 70% of IT projects will come in materially late, materially over budget, or will fail to meet significant user expectations" (Tom Ingram, "Project Management Journal," June, 1994).
"31.1% of projects will be canceled before they ever get completed; 52.7% of projects will cost 189% of their original estimates." (Standish Group).

An abundance of meaning to one person may mean next to nothing to another person. I think it depends on how much noise you've heard, and how much noise you can handle, and how you percieve the noise. If a person expanded their boundaries, or killed their boundaries completely...when a person could know everything...I wonder if they would still find meaning to all this? I think, whether they find meaning or not, they would be DISGUSTED with the world.