[MD] Quantum computing

[Magnus Berg]

It's hard to keep up here. I get busy with other things for a few days and get 
hopelessly behind.

skutvik at online.no wrote:
> Let's stick to the general tenet about a pattern of the old level 
> becoming the stepping stone for the new. Pirsig points to carbon 
> as that of biology, but even so carbon itself remains inorganic. 
> You and I seem to agree on the said neural complexity as the 
> stepping stone for social value, but like always the "stepping 
> stone" remains behind (brains are biology). 

I don't think we can say that "carbon itself remains inorganic" because carbon 
has biological value for carbon based life forms. It's yet another *thing* that 
points to the difference in the SOM division of the world and the MoQ levels.

>> I tend to think that intellectual patterns is the only level that can
>> represent other patterns of any level, including intellectual
>> patterns. 
> 
> That long did my contentment last?  Again this impossible 
> intellectual level that can "represent other patterns ...etc."  When 
> did anyone before Pirsig speak of Q-patterns? Never, because 
> there was only SOM and its mind-intellect surely represented 
> (contained) the whole world. This mind-intellect "dragged and 
> dropped" inside the MOQ spoils it. 
> 
> For the nth time, the 4th level is static and will have to have a 
> fixed repertoire, besides like all the previous level shifts: The 
> intellectual pattern that became the stepping stone of the MOQ 
> will remain intellectual (SOM) till kingdom comes. To stick to a 
> mind-intellect is like insisting that carbon is life    

Fixed repertoire? Not if you want to map SOM things to levels. Also, I can agree 
to some extent that SOM is an intellectual pattern. And even if it's a very 
large and complex set of patterns, it doesn't fill up the intellectual level by 
even a fraction. So to say that SOM *is* the whole intellectual level is a 
pretty big leap. I would say that the MoQ is also an intellectual pattern. It's 
an idea, an abstract description of something else. Everything that is an 
abstract description of something else *is* an intellectual pattern.

> Another thing. All intellectual patterns that Pirsig pointed to in 
> LILA are invariably S/O-patterned, this ought to have sounded 
> "bells and whistles", but he had somehow started on the wrong 
> foot and was not able to correct it. In the Paul Turner letter he 
> admits the error of the mind-intellect and his new  "manipulation 
> of symbol" definition could have helped if he had emphasized the 
> "symbol/what it symbolizes" distinction, but alas

Is this letter on Moq.org? I'll try to find it.

> OK, but if so (an expanded definition of) language replaces 
> Quality. The storage of past experience as neural patterns is 
> biological language-value. "How intellect skips the social level ... 
> IN BRAINS"? Brain is biology, but you probably mean "why SOM 
> has "mind-out-of-matter", and that I agree with, all the more so 
> because it proves that you too sees SOM as intellect.      

No, I mean that the brain supports, and contains, intellectual patterns.
And what is "biological language-value"? Biology doesn't value language, it can 
live on perfectly fine without it. It's when several cells wants to cooperate to 
form a larger "animal" that they need language to cooperate in their newly 
founded social "society". This language is later used when the animal gets too 
big and needs a neural network to control its muscles. And when this neural 
network is large enough, we call it a brain.


> Please give me some examples non-S/O intellect-

As Pirsig described in ZMM, the pre-Plato Sophists seemed to use a non-S/O based 
world view. Buddhism and native american indians are probably also pretty far 
outside S/O thinking.

On the other hand, we don't have to get so theoretical about it. A shopping list 
is intellectual patterns and doesn't rely on S/O thinking to be understood.

>> We still use intellectual patterns to
>> describe and discuss the MoQ. 
> 
> As said above: Only the MOQ enables us to discuss the level 
> aspect of existence. Not from one of its sub-sets. 
> 
>> Are you saying that those patterns we
>> express to discuss the MoQ here are not intellectual level patterns?
> 
> Yes, that's exactly what I say.  

I disagree. Would the MoQ be some kind of 5th level then? And what distinguishes 
that level from the 4th? What more patterns of this 5th level can you find?

	Magnus