[MD] Quantum computing

[skutvik at online.no]

Hi Platt
I lag behind in my response, but I refuse to have more than one 
MD session a day so forgive me if there are empty spaces in our 
dialogue. This however requires immediate reaction. 

On 1 Mar. you quoted yours sincerely:

> > The point is that the said ancient peoplee did not say "Now I'll
> > make up an abstract theory". The arrival of that attitude IS the
> > very intellectual level. When will this dawn on you and everybody
> > else?  

And went on:
 
> Yes, the intellectual level arrived when people started to think about
> thinking, opening the gate to infinite regress and other limitations.

We have agreed on and off for a long time, but this looks like a 
breakthrough. A little comment. "Thinking about thinking" may 
not have been the first intellectual sign - to me the description in 
ZMM tells about its long journey from the early Greek 
philosophers (500 BC) to the breakthrough with Aristotles. But still 
very much "in the service" of the social level (Aristotles becoming 
a Church authority) till the European Enlightenment when the 
subject/ object "knife" turned on itself. The empiricists (Locke, 
Berkeley and Hume) asked how the subject got its information 
from the alleged objective world and ended doubting the 
connection - even doubting if there were such a world - and 
finally Kant who cemented the S/O incompatibility (ah this takes 
too long) Anyway, because Pirsig in ZMM refers a lot to these 
philosophers - and their approach to the problem - I take these 
intellectual patterns to be (some) of the stepping stone to the 
Quality "level".         

> Now the MOQ level has arrived and people can think about intellect as
> a static value pure and simple, thus bypassing paradox, recursions,
> strange loops and infinite regress  -- the tipping points where
> intellect hits the wall and reveals its not the preeminent value it
> thinks it is.

EXACTLY!

IMO

Bo