[MD] Chance

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Platt]
If I could do that I would be some kind of hero to the evolutionists.

[Arlo]
I am asking you to speculate. This is an important ramification of 
the claim that "only man" responds to DQ. To restate.

If animals could respond to DQ in the past (DQ-animals), (1) what was 
the nature of this ability? what could they do?, (2) was there ever 
an overlap, a time when both DQ-animals and DQ-man walked the earth 
together? Or did DQ-animals in North America "lose" their DQ-ness 
when DQ-man appears in Africa? (3) was there ever a time when NOTHING 
on the earth could respond to DQ? Before "man", was it always that 
something, somewhere could respond to DQ? During the time of the 
dinosaurs, for example, what was DQ-enabled? T-rex? Lemurs? Ferns? 
(4) Extending that, before the era of animals, is your proposal that 
"plants" could respond to DQ? If not, what? If so, what is the nature 
of how those plants could "act" that they can no longer do? (5) When 
"cats", to use one example, could respond to DQ (DQ-cats), what could 
they do then that they can no longer do now? Again, speculate. Did 
they have "free will" when they were DQ-cats? And, importantly (6) 
why did DQ-animals lose their ability? If they could respond to DQ, 
what made them stop? Is your assumption that humans could one day 
"lose" the ability to respond to DQ? If not, why not?

Take a crack at any of these. Speculate. Guess. I don't think it'll 
be easy, I think the absurdity of the claim that "only man" responds 
to DQ is evident here. Again, if we consider that all patterns 
respond to DQ, but do so only with a repertoire of constraints and 
affordances allowed by their evolutionary level, we get a wholly 
solid picture. There were no "DQ-cats" then and "Non-DQ-cats" now. 
There were always "cats", and "cats" could always respond the same 
way to DQ, the same way ten thousand years ago as today. With the 
advent of the social level, certain animals (I break from Pirsig on 
this, as I do think some primates and other species evidence 
rudimentary social level patterning) gained a whole new repertoire of 
responses, of which "man's" has been the most complex by far. With 
the advent of the intellectual level, "man" again gained a whole new 
repertoire of responses. But along the way, nothing "lost" the 
ability to respond to DQ. Some things just gained new affordances, 
amazing new repertoires of responses.