[MD] Collective intelligence

[pholden at davtv.com]

Quoting ARLO J BENSINGER JR <ajb102 at psu.edu>:

> [Arlo previously]
> So what makes something "intellectual" is how few people understand it? How
> about mathematics? Is that "common knowledge"? Does that make math a social
> pattern?
> 
> [Platt]
> Arithmetic is common knowledge. Topology is not.
> 
> [Arlo]
> Are you saying arithmetic is social and topology is intellectual? 

That's what I'm saying. 

> For me,
> you've just proved my point, "math" is an intellectual pattern (or collection
> of intellectual patterns" and it is "common knowledge". Thus "common knowledge"
> is not simply "the social level".

I'm saying arithmetic is a social level pattern because it is common knowledge,
just as "George Washington was the first president of the U.S." is a social level
pattern. 
 
> [Arlo previously]
> In ZMM, which Pirsig calls the path to enlightenment. 
> 
> [Platt]
> Have you the exact quote? 
> 
> [Arlo]
> Right. Because you've never seen this before. 
> 
> ""Quality is the continuing stimulus which causes us to create the world in
> which we live. All of it. Every last bit of it." Religion isn't invented by
> man. Men are invented by religion. Men invent responses to Quality, and among
> these responses is an understanding of what they themselves are. You know
> something and then the Quality stimulus hits and then you try to define the
> Quality stimulus, but to define it all you've got to work with is what you
> know. So your definition is made up of what you know. It's an analogue to what
> you already know. It has to be. It can't be anything else. And the mythos grows
> this way. By analogies to what is known before. The mythos is a building of
> analogues upon analogues upon analogues. These fill the collective
> consciousness of all communicating mankind. Every last bit of it. "
> 
> This is preceded by this important statement.
> 
> "What keeps the world from reverting to the Neanderthal with each generation is
> the continuing, ongoing mythos, transformed into logos but still mythos, the
> huge body of common knowledge that unites our minds as cells are united in the
> body of man. To feel that one is not so united, that one can accept or discard
> this mythos as one pleases, is not to understand what the mythos is."

Thanks, you proved Horse's point ". . .  the huge body of common knowledge . . ."
The mythos in the MOQ is a social pattern, made clear by the following:

"This "mythos over logos" thesis agreed with the Metaphysics of Quality's assertion
that intellectual static patterns of quality are built up out of social static
patterns of quality." (Lila, 30)

Common knowledge = mythos = social pattern. It fits the MOQ to a T.



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