[MD] Quantum computing

[skutvik at online.no]

Hi Ham 

On 15 Feb. Sprach Zarathustra (Nietzsche):
 
> It disturbs me that MoQers have been taken in by this New Age
> nonsense.  If Pirsig's philosophy fosters the notion that computers
> will inevitably replace human beings as the source of philosophical
> questions, there's a glitch in the MoQ that needs fixing.  Perhaps Bo
> has found it and is attempting to fix it by readjusting the
> Intellectual Level.

Support comes from the most surprising directions, but you're 
right Ham, there has been, and still is, much New Age nonsense 
surrounding the MOQ, perhaps because Pirsig himself is a bit 
ambiguous here. For instance regarding Quantum Mech. He uses 
it to show that SOM's matter dissolves at the quantum level and 
that MOQ's inorganic level better fits the role as matter. But is the 
inorganic level=matter? If so what Q-level better fits mind's role,  
both SOM realms are supposed to be  equally untenable, no?  

Of course, inorganic vale has nothing to do with matter and (as 
has become clear) intellect has nothing to do with mind; no static 
level corresponds to anything in SOM and thus no SOM-induced 
ideas  including "conscious computers" and "fusion of mind and 
matter" (if that is what New Age postulates?) are valid in the 
MOQ.           

> Personally, I think it's the tangle of levels and patterns that has
> led this group astray.  When we seek understanding in the evolution of
> biological organisms and cultural trends, we lose our individual focus
> and get caught up in miscellaneous influences that are several times
> removed from the core issues of philosophy.  Digital technology is one
> of them, by the way: it's now fashionable to reduce all knowledge to
> numbers and digits and call it "intellectual understanding".

What you complain about seems not based in the MOQ, on the 
contrary that the MOQ is the problem, and that makes it a bit 
difficult - always is in your case Ham.   
 
> It seems to me that Bo is right that individual consciousness and mind
> are slighted by the MoQ, and that the level heirarchy usurps what is
> arguably the most significant phenomenon of existence -- its conscious
> awareness. What good are Quality, Values and Experience if they are
> not realized as proprietary awareness?  Certainly this must concern
> Pirsig's followers. Will Magnus suggest that his quantum computer has
> better questions to pose? No doubt a computer would resolve Bo's
> dilemma by positing itself as the intellectual locus of the universe.
 
I'm not sure if my point is what you want it to be. Remember 
Scott Roberts? You and he must have been very close, you with 
your individual consciousness Scott with intellect as "it all" (to the 
degree I was able to understand him) which IMO turns out the 
same.      

> Seriously, folks, Being Aware is not only what existence and its
> values are about, it is primary to everything we know about the
> physical world. And the only beings on planet Earth with intellectual
> awareness are human beings. To dismiss that fact, or fail to
> acknowledge it, misconstrues the purpose of philosophy.

You seem not to understand the point of the MOQ. Pirsig had 
Quality as reality's ground, you have Human Consciousness and 
then you can make a similar metaphysics of it. Dynamic Human 
Consciousness and the world as it appears for he human 
consciousness: Inorganic, biological ... and so on. To me the 
"ground" isn't all that important, but the Dynamic/Static divide 
and the static levels are all important.   

IMO

Bo