[MD] Quantum computing

[skutvik at online.no]

Horse and the whole stable ;-)

On 15 March you wrote to Magnus:

> I've been thinking about what you've been saying recently and thought
> I might add a few comments. I've chopped out big chunks of previous
> posts as I only really want to address a couple of main issues.
 
> Magnus Berg wrote:
 
> 1)
> > In my view of the MoQ, there are no fuzzy borders. Fuzziness is bad.
> > How can even the MoQ include fuzziness if all of reality is made of
> > quality events? Each QE is between two patterns of the same type,
> > right? So how on earth *can* fuzziness arise from that? I thought
> > you understood (and perhaps even agreed with) the dimensional view
> > of the levels? And that view removes fuzziness.
 
> If by fuzziness you mean a blurring of definitions or borders between
> the levels then I would tend to agree as I also see the levels as
> discrete and in opposition or, as you put it, orthogonal. However, if
> you mean fuzziness, in the technical sense, then I disagree with you.
> I'm not sure if we may have had this conversation some years back but
> I see the mathematical/logical sense of fuzziness as fundamental to
> the MoQ as it removes the Either/Or distinction in favour of the
> Also/And view. In other words it is the negation of the law of the
> excluded middle. For me this gels perfectly with the MoQ view that any
> "thing" that you care to mention is a conglomeration of static
> patterns of value with a relationship with DQ. The degree to which
> each level inheres is a fuzzy measure as opposed to a binary measure.

This is a bit too technical for me, but a central tenet of the MOQ 
is that a pattern of the lower level was used by the DQ to form 
the building block of - or stepping stone to - the next level. Pirsig 
describes how the element carbon fills this role for biology. 
However he has no opinion just how, or what were the first living 
organisms. If self-reproduction is its criteria the virus is not quite 
life and not all dead, so a little fuzziness exists at least between 
these two levels and I guess between all levels.      
 
There is also the "in the service of the parent level" postulate. 
How it is to be interpreted in the inorganic-biological case I'm not 
sure, but in the upper levels it makes lot of sense, and if one 
takes the "family" term, it's difficult to say if it is biology or 
society. Animals of the mammal genus (is that it?) form families 
at least for the first mother-child generation up to a certain age 
...etc, but the importance of the family only occurs at the social 
level proper where the family/tribe is the most basic and tough 
social link.     


> 2)
> > Ok, we disagree completely here. I say that scale doesn't matter at
> > all. Why can't you see that a dimensional view of the levels means
> > that we don't have to decide where level boundaries should be drawn
> > based on scale? We can treat a collection of cells as a society
> > *and* as a biological animal. We don't have to choose! And we don't
> > have to get those fuzzy borders. If scale counts all that much that
> > you seem to imply, how can it be that the inorganic level works on
> > all scales - atoms, rocks, planets, solar systems, galaxies and
> > galaxy clusters - but the social level is confined to, what exactly,
> > tribes, cities and countries?
 
> 3)
>  > In my view, animals are societies of organs, but that doesn't mean
>  > they lose their biological value. If you use your level rule above,
>  it > would end up in the social level, but that might not be the best
>  way > to describe an animal. (In fact, I'd even raise it to the
>  intellectual > level. Please read back a few posts in this thread to
>  see why.)

> Your reference to "societies" of cells is the second point I'd like to
> bring up. The way that you use the term in a MoQ context is, I think,
> inaccurate as it tends to break the evolutionary and hierarchical
> structure of the MoQ. Something that I brought up a while back but
> which didn't seem to create too much enthusiasm is a network view
> within the MoQ. As I know you have a strong background in computing I
> though that I might run it past you to see if it makes any sense to
> you. What you seem to be referring to when you talk about "societies"
> of cells etc. could be better thought of as networks of cells. In fact
> from the quantum level up the term network would appear to be a better
> used term. A network at it's most basic level is a set of nodes and
> their connections so think of an atom as a network of quantum
> particles, a molecule as a network of atoms, a cell as a network of
> molecules (and a lot of other stuff but basically a molecular
> network), a body as a network of organs, a society as a network of
> bodies, beliefs etc. and so on right up to the intellectual level.
> Using the computing analogy you can look at complex structures as
> networks of (sub)networks with different interfacing methods and
> protocols to bridge the MoQ level structure. Above you mention the
> idea of scaling and there are plenty of analogies within the network
> view which would accommodate this. Think of wide area networks,
> internetworks etc. I won't go into it any further at the moment as I
> thought I'd first see if it strikes a chord with you.

Yes, I think Magnus has painted himself into the network corner, 
but being extremely stubborn he is unable to admit it - not to 
speak of calling for help ;-) 

Bo