[MD] What Bo Doesn't Get

[Krimel]

> [Krimel]
> Sorry, I thought you were trying to make a point where Pirsig's writing
> leads to none. But at least we agree that Pirsig is no expert on 
> evolution. I am by no means the only one to have noted Pirsig's 
> deficiencies on these points.

Dan:
Fair enough. Let's trot it around the track: evolution is how patterns
adapt in response to change, or dynamic quality (small case default)
in other words. Patterns change, sure, but the change is one way. They
wear down. Eventually they go ka-put. There's got to be more to it...

[Krimel]
Because the Earth is constantly bombarded with an excess of solar radiation,
we do not see things winding down. Rather because of the excess they appear
to wind up. Case put it this way:

"Molecules dancing
While entropy's waiting
We are sunlight
Dissipating."

I can't express it more concisely than that.

[Dan]
Okay, here, maybe this will help: Evolution is a reflexive process
where the output of one cycle becomes the input for the next. One door
opens and another closes, sure that makes sense. But still, I can't
help but feel something is missing. What is it?

[Krimel]
Perhaps a sense of how marvelous and creative the process you describe above
really is.

>> [Krimel]
>> But take the sketch you outline about. Natural selection does not mean
>> that Mother Nature is gussied up in a nice apron picking and choosing
>> which of her offspring deserve to make up the next generation. Natural
>> selection is purely and simply a matter of chance. It is static patterns
>> congealing out of dynamic and chaotic interactions. If only Pirsig had
>> understood this.

Dan:
I think this is wrong. The old adage that if you put a bunch of
monkeys behind keyboards long enough that eventually one will write a
Shakespearean sonnet is pure and simple bullshit. The creationists use
it all the time. You know that.

[Krimel]
I don’t think that creationists are likely to agree with this notion at all.
It runs completely in the opposite direction that they would like things to
go. The probability of any number of monkey's with typewriters producing
Shakespeare is entirely calculable given whatever set of parameters you care
to specify but neither of us is likely to live long enough to tally the
results of such an experiment if we should choose to conduct it.

> [Krimel]
> That's what I have been saying for 4 years. I suspect it is because he
> didn't understand chaos. This is not surprising since much of his thinking
> seems limited to the years prior to his break down. It is not just in the
> area of evolution where he quotes 50's era Mayr and De Chardin. But in
> anthropology were he quotes Benedict and Boaz with no mention of say Levi
> Strauss, Whorf or Bateson.

Dan:
I know you've had a beef (they eat horses in France though... come to
think of it, that should solve John's concerns about homeless equines)
with Pirsig's take on evolution but I've never understood exactly why.
It always seemed a bit like sour grapes to me.

Robert Pirsig is from a different generation than I am and probably
you as well. I fail to see how that negates his point of view,
however. He is clear that chaos is not what he's talking about when he
says Dynamic Quality. I suggest it's your misunderstanding and not
his. Like Bo, I sometimes think you're reading more into it than there
is.

[Krimel]
It is slightly more than sour grapes when an author one respects totally
misrepresents a set of ideas about which his work has so much to say. Pirsig
wrote Lila years after the publication on "The Selfish Gene" or
"Sociobiology" or any number of books by Stephen J. Gould. To write a
chapter in a book published in 1991 without acknowledgment of their
contributions to the field is inexcusable.

To talk about chaos in such naïve terms after Gleick's 1987 book is a bit
shoddy but at least understandable. To persist in defending Pirsig's view of
chaos in light of Gleick and Prigogine and Mandelbrot is just willful
ignorance.

Dan:
If by according him a modicum of respect is a disservice, then I am guilty.

[Krimel]
It would be rude to suggest that respect can bleed into fawning and blind
subservience, so I won’t.

> Dan:
> In the MOQ, Dynamic and static are not relative terms. I think that is
> the central  point of misunderstanding.
>
> [Krimel]
> I think it is central to someone's misunderstanding. Are you suggesting 
> that anything at all is absolutely static and unchanging?

Dan:
The terms are relative in that they're both intellectual patterns of value.

[Krimel]
As are any terms we use to talk about them. We are always talking with and
about intellectual patterns of value. The question is always: In term of
value, which are worth more? Or as I like to think of it: Which are more
likely or of more value?

Dan:
So you're saying all there is is static quality. Dynamic quality is
only a synonym for change. If we don't understand it now, it's only a
matter of time until we do.

That's not right. And I don't know. I guess that's all I can say about that.

{Krimel]
I would say that we humans tend to place much more "value" on static
patterns. We love certainly and we love it by degrees. We appreciate fixed
probabilities because they enable us to plan for the future. Uncertainly can
be entertaining in small doses like a new song but on the whole we avoid it
like the plague that it is, literally.

>> [Dan]
>> Thanks Krimel, and good to have you back,
>>
>> [Krimel]
>> Thanks Dan, but relax I won't be here long.
>>
> [Dan]
> Me either.
>
> [Krimel]
> Here's hoping you mean that in John's "philosophical" sense.

Dan:
Oh you know me... I pop in from time to time but like a good guest I
never stay long.

{Krimel]
I am working hard to join the ivory tower crowd for as long as they will
have me and that allows time for little else. So I too strive to be a "good
guest".