[MD] Stacks

[Mary]

[Magnus]
...
> The term stack is used in technical contexts.
...
. Each layer is pretty thin, i.e. it uses the layer below and
> exposes an interface upward that is a little better, or easier to use,
> or whatever that particular layer is supposed to do.
...
> Such a stack is pretty much like the static levels of the MoQ. One
> level
> uses the level below and then exposes something new to the level above
> so the next level can do better and more dynamic things.

[Mary Replies]
Stacks are nothing at all like the levels of the MoQ.  For one thing,
programmatic stacks are top-down constructs.  The end result is always
clearly understood before the first layer in the stack is ever defined.  The
MoQ levels are bottom-up and unless we are willing to go the determinism
route, you cannot say that a lower level was designed to support or interact
with an upper one.  You can only say that the upper level emerged from the
lower to value purposes of its own.  

But that's just the minor problem.  The bigger issue is that you are
committing the error of equating levels with collections of like things  The
boundaries between the levels are not defined by attributes, but rather by
what is valued.  The trick to properly delineating the levels is to see them
as collections, all right, but not as collections defined by attributes.
They are instead collections of patterns which in some way or another all
_value_ the same thing.  When examining the properties or attributes of any
given 'thing' and trying to assign it to its proper level, you must ignore
the properties or attributes of the 'thing' and instead focus on what
pattern of values it serves.  Or, to be even more precise, what _highest_
pattern of value it serves; since, as we all know, most 'things', including
certainly human beings, are a collection of patterns at many different
levels simultaneously.

[Magnus]
> There's no human involvement here, there's only the iron filings and
> the magnet. Nobody is watching it, so there's no human observer. The iron
> filings are the subject that values movement towards the object, the
> magnet. It's pure inorganic patterns having some quality time with each
> other. This inorganic level we see here is the inorganic level in the
> stack I'd like to call "the universal stack".

[Mary replies]
A huge red flag goes up for me with this statement, "...iron filings are the
subject that values movement towards the object".  Yes, but this is SOM to
the hilt, being exactly the scientific+Subject-Object-Logic worldview which
the MoQ attempts to refute.  In MoQ terms, the iron filings _value_ movement
toward the magnet as you say, but are not doing so in response to a
scientific law of nature, but rather because they _value_ it at that
instance.  The fact that they continue to be attracted at different times is
only because a static latch has been made for that Moral.  That is not the
same as saying it's an objective _fact_.  It is rather saying it is a
statically latched pattern of value that prevails in the Universe because it
is more _moral_ than not.

[Magnus]
> Are there more stacks?
> 
> Yes, You can for example find one stack inside a computer. The
> inorganic level in a computer is not made of atoms and molecules, but by
ones and
> zeros. The laws of nature doesn't include gravity and electromagnetism
> but only boolean logic such as and, or, not, etc. Computer viruses are
> a very simple form of biological patterns built using those ones, zeros
> and computer logic.

[Mary replies]
It's a free country and you are certainly at liberty to create any
configuration of levels you like, but I, for one, have found great meaning
in the Pirsig _moral_ hierarchy as proposed and see no need to manufacture
alternate cosmologies.  The functioning of computers I am very comfortable
with, yet find no reason to develop a new set of levels to describe them.  

Your objection, and thus your need to create alternate sets of levels,
appears to derive from a real need to dis-anthropomorphize the MoQ.  A
worthy goal, and one I also raised here in the beginning of my latest
sojourn in this space, but it is really quite unnecessary - for you see, we
have no other model other than the human available to us.  All else is
science fiction and no doubt lacking in substantial detail at this point.
When or if we ever discover the silicon based life form on a planet far-far
away which uses not DNA, but some other unimaginable mechanism for
propagation of information, then we can talk.  In fact, I would love to.

[Magnus]
> However, sometimes Pirsig uses another stack that I'd like to call "the
> human perspective stack". For example when he discusses the Victorian
> moral codes, he describes them as social patterns. But they are social
> patterns only if viewed from a human perspective.

[Mary replies]
Sure.  What other perspective would you use?  I suspect that you and I are
essentially in more agreement than disagreement, if the truth were told,
because if you take Pirsig's fundamental statements about the nature of the
levels, how they interact, how they emerged from the prior, how they
conflict, and how we can possibly use them as stepping-stones to creating a
better world-view, I imagine we agree on most of the things that are
important about his whole concept.  As I am starting to see it, the problems
lie in the areas where Pirsig took an elegant, Tao-inspired world-view and
corrupted it into a SOMish construct.  Why he did this I do not presume to
know, but it has muddied the waters here and elsewhere for a number of
years.

Here's where you and I have a problem.

You said in a much later post in this thread:

"Morals = Reality = Quality".

Well, I would say, "Morals = Value = Quality" and the combination of all 3 =
Reality.  But, the word 'reality' is the sticking point, isn't it?  For you,
reality is apparently a subject and an object.  To be quite honest, for me,
it usually is to.  But, every once in a while, I have a little spark of
inspiration which allows me to see beyond the usual view.  The view that's
been handed down to me since the beginning of human time through my DNA; a
view which allows me to see not subjects and objects, but patterns of value
instead.  Just for a moment, and I know from that little moment that there
is hope for us.  This is Pirsig's achievement, IMHO.

Best,
Mary