[MD] Intellect's Symposium

[Krimel]

> [Mati:]
> I think it is great that you see that intelligence or as you say
> intellectual patterns served social patterns.  So when did
> intellectual patterns free themselves from the social level and how?
>
> [Krimel]
> I am tempted to say emphatically NEVER! Intellectual and social patterns
> have ALWAYS coexisted in Homo Sapiens.

> If you insist on a "when" and a "how", I would say, When the first large
> brained hairless ape emerged from the womb and by means of adaptation to
> selection pressures in the early environment our ancestors called home.

[Mati:]
Wow talk about a show stopper.  So the social level and
intellectual level evolved in close succession. This is a very
interesting idea.... but know we are talking about something other
than MoQ.  At best there is co-existence of your so called intellect
and the social level. That seems pretty meaningless and a huge step
backwards.

[Krimel]
I did not say the social and intellectual levels evolved in close
succession. Human social patterns can be dated to the about the time our
ancestors shared close kinship with lemurs; as close as say humans to
chimps. 

> [Mati:]
>Social patterns are encoded in our DNA?

> [Krimel]
> Yes, they are. From the production of oxitocin in Mom, Dad and infant 
> during the birth process, to the newborn's ability to imitate facial 
> expressions at birth. From our innate ability to acquire language to 
> social emotions like pride and shame; social patterns are biologically
> encoded.

[Mati:]
Krimel I have to say, two show stoppers in one posting your are
going for a record. I can't say that enough how much I disagree with
this.

[Krimel]
I just gave you nearly ten examples of biologically encoded social patterns.
I can provide more. Why should it surprise you that an organism would come
into the world biologically patterned to thrive in it? An organism thrown
into a social world ought to be biologically equipped with more than a few
social patterns.

> [Krimel]
> First of all I am not at all convinced that there are such children. But 
> the examples that are commonly used for this, all show children exhibiting

> deep and profound pathology. It's called Reactive Attachment Disorder. Ask

> Lu about it.

[Mati:]
I am not sure that I could convince you much of anything at this
point. Personally I am talking about kids with profound cognitive
delays. RAD kids are tend to have elevated cognitive abilities in
comparison with the kids I am talking about however RAD kids don't
have the natural tendency to maintain social relationships.

[Krimel]
Look, human infants are biologically prepared to enter into a social world.
They are programmed to detect and project social patterns. What if this
doesn't happen; say their biological needs are met but they do not have
social contact? There is a clinical term for this: seriously fucked-up. A
sizable number die. The cause of death is: failure to thrive. The degree of
fucked-upedness is largely a function of degree and duration of social
isolation.

This was actually demonstrated in Ceausescu's Romania sometime between 1974
and 1989. The result was, as many as, 100,000 orphans with varying degrees
of fucked-upedness.

You say, "RAD kids don't have the natural tendency to maintain social
relationships."

Why would you expect a child raised in an unnatural environment to exhibit
"natural tendencies" of any kind?

[Mati:]
Because the intellect you are talking about is certainly
something way different than what I am discussing.  Frankly you seem
to say any sign of intelligence is a sign of intellect.  That doesn't
tell us much and seems to have no general meaning other than to say
intellect or intelligence or thinking exist, they are they are
relatively the same thing, end of story.  I think the story of life is
far more rich than this.

[Krimel]
Any sign of intelligence is a sign of intelligence. When there are enough of
them, they form patterns. Patterns have extension in time. We call it
duration. Those intellectual patterns that endure form the intellectual
level. They populate it. Patterns of ideas persist through replication or
for Mary: iteration. The more people who think them, the stronger they are.
(Think Neil Gaiman's "American Gods") if they are ignored, they fade away
like eight track tapes and Tinkerbell. 

When intellectual patterns persist only in the minds of individual human, as
they did for say 150,000 years, they are fragile. They tend toward short
duration and rapid mutation. Replication is an analog and iffy process.
Those patterns had to be very important to be of long duration. Oral
traditions, folklore and apprenticeship are amazing accomplishments but they
limit the expansion of the level by limiting the duration of intellectual
patterns.  Writing allowed ideas to endure in the absence of any thinker at
all. Written intellectual patterns lay dormant, in encoded form, waiting to
infect any mind that can decode them.

How much richer does this story need to be?

I could go on...

[Mati:]
All I can say is that we beat to different drums.  That is ok but I
think you have a harder time legitimizing you line of thinking as a
valid part of MoQ.

[Krimel]
Nothing wrong with different drums. I bought a set of bongo not long ago. At
Christmas I had two grandkids trying to decide between pounding them or
sitting on them. 

I often seem to find myself in the position of criticizing someone I believe
to have seen very far, for not having seen farther. But I think Pirsig's
view was limited by his misunderstanding of evolution and probability.