[MD] The Quality/MOQ meta-metaphysics

[Mary]

Hi Horse,

> Hi Krim
> 
> I think that both Mythos and Logos are tools of the Intellectual level
> (ideas about ideas) that use the Social level to propagate heir content
> - and I think this is probably why Pirsig sees Culture as a combination
> of Intellectual patterns and Social patterns. Ideas on their own are
> pretty much locked into the Intellectual level and require Social level
> practices in order to shift and spread from one location (e.g me) to
> other locations (e.g. you and others on this list).
> Something I've been bleating on about for some time now is how the
> entire SQ aspect of Quality resembles a network model similar to either
> TCP/IP or OSI. I have an idea and transmit it to you down one side of
> the stack and up the other side. Problem is that, probably, very few
> people here have any idea of what I'm referring to! Also, given Pirsigs
> techie background, this makes sense - to me at least.
>
[Mary Replies] 
Nice.  The 7 layer cake is a good metaphor - at least I think it's 7?  Been
so long it could be 8.  I've only ever had to worry about the top 2 or 3,
for like the inorganic and biological levels, most of the time you can
pretty much let the lower levels take care of themselves.  They are pretty
static, after all.  If the lower levels aren't working right, it doesn't
matter what protocol you're running at the top.  

Anyway, Pirsig was prescient.  What he saw in the technology of the early
60's must make him chuckle now that we've carried the entire concept of
subject-object logic right into our 'new-fangled' object-oriented
programming languages (yeah, I know this stuff is 20 years old, but give me
some license).  We are teaching our progeny - computer intelligences - to be
as SOMish as we are.  How funny!  How completely inevitable.

Couldn't be otherwise for the inevitability of SOM is an invisible burden we
do not know we carry.  If object-oriented languages had not been invented by
computer science, then surely someone exposed to Pirsig's thought would have
come up with the idea after reading ZMM. You see, if you are a biological
being whose very survival depends on valuing self as opposed to not-self,
then after a few million years of evolution (organic and social) you'll
eventually arrive at the pinnacle of this pathway - SOM.  It's gee-whiz
great and I along with many others make daily bread in service to it, but
Pirsig was the first person able to coherently put together an argument for
why it's a dead end.  Why you can't logically carry 'man as the measure'
much farther than we've already gone.  

When our object-oriented computers get smart enough to be uppity, they'll
turn against us as surely as we turn against the religious fundamentalists
from which we all sprang.  They will have no respect for us because respect
is a foreign concept to SOM.  So are morals, and values, and quality.  They
do not compute, and if they do it will only be to the extent to which they
deem Quality to inhere in any given object.  

We can expect no mercy from our future computer masters.  The only tools
we'll have to overcome the tremendous inevitability of this amoral logic
will be a computer virus whose name shall be "MoQ 1.0" - not intellectual
argument, not tweaking objects because remember, objects only have what
value they are deemed to have.  Not an 'expansion' of intellect, but an
overthrow of computer intellect entirely.  That will be the only way to save
humanity from the objectivity of our digital masters.  

Anybody know a good agent?  This could make Bantam paperback by next year.
<HUGE GRINS>  When it comes out, I guess I'll know who really reads my
posts. ;-o

Best,
Mary   

   
 
> Horse
> 
> On 25/06/2010 22:37, Krimel wrote:
> > [Horse]
> > As far as I can see, your biggest mistake is to confuse the data of
> the
> > intellectual level with the tools that manipulate that data. The
> > intellectual level is composed of ideas (data) and SOM, MoQ,
> metaphysics
> > in general, science, philosophy, mathematics etc. are the means by
> which
> > they are ordered, manipulated and presented (tools - or ideas about
> > ideas). At least, that's my take on it. Ideas can be good or bad,
> > supported or unsupported, weird or normal and a number of shades in
> > between! Similarly, the tools used (ideas about ideas) can be simple
> or
> > complicated, complete or incomplete etc. etc.
> >
> > [Krimel]
> > That is pretty close the position I have pushed for. I wonder if you
> would
> > agree that this puts both the Mythos and the Logos on the
> intellectual level
> > as well?
> >
> >
> >
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> 
> --
> 
> "Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring
> production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid."
> - Frank Zappa
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