[MD] Intellect's Symposium

[Krimel]

[John]
You sure make good sense sometimes:

[Krimel]
Thanks, I don't get that a lot.

>[Krimel]
> I am tempted to say emphatically NEVER! Intellectual and social patterns
> have ALWAYS coexisted in Homo Sapiens.
>
[Jonh]
But what are the demonstrable, empirical facts of the matter?

[Krimel]
Cave paintings, burials, stone tools... What sort of facts are you looking
for?

John:  
There's no such thing as a social pattern evolving into an intellectual
pattern.  Who came up with that idea? Or is it a residue of a hierarchical
thinking being applied to the MoQ? something to which I've objected
before...

[Krimel]
The MoQ is a hierarchical system in which each successive level emerges from
stasis at the level below.

[John]
It's all about the boobs, Krimel.  Think of 'em as handy mnemonic devices.

[Krimel]
But is a boob in hand worth two in the bush?

[John:]
Fish react, but humans think.  It's why fish are catchable and people are
not.

[Krimel]
Fish can't learn? Is that right? Maybe you should check this out:
http://fliiby.com/file/490172/d0fg08y1kr.html 

John:  
Harumph.  I don't think so.  The levels are discrete.  They don't
evolve INTO one another.  If we're lucky, we can find the dividing line
between them, in our lifetime, but you gonna preach to me about spontaneous
generation and the monkeys at the keyboards, Mr. atheistic evolutionists?  I
thought atheists didn't believe in preaching unverifiable ideas.

[Krimel]
Of course the levels are not discrete. That is a ridiculous claim.

[John:] 
Australian Abos didn't.  But then, they could argue that nobody else
in the world came up with an aerodynamic stick and once they perfected it,
they didn't need to chip away at flints.

[Krimel]
The only Abos anywhere who didn't use stone tools were ones who had no rocks
around.

[John:]
I don't agree with Pirsig on this one.  What primitive tribes?  How many
tribes that never bothered with writing, nevertheless had their own Plato?
 Their own Aristotles?   They get encoded into the mythos as "sages of old"
and only in our values-defunct culture do we think of them as the
"simpletons of old".

[Krimel]
Ideas that cannot be recollected, are not part of the intellectual level.

[John:]
What is more significant?  Coming up with a brand new way of thinking?  Or
refining a very old one?

I'd say the latter.  Everybody that's born comes up with a new way of
thinking, but very, very few are qualified to refine old ways.

[Krimel]
I guess it only matters if people think the old idea repackaged is a new
one.