[MD] Stacks

[Magnus Berg]

Hi Mary

On 2010-08-03 19:24, Mary wrote:
> [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.

Nah, I wouldn't be so categorical about that. Some stacks have grown 
bottom up over time. Take the TCP/IP stack for example. It started quite 
small with just enough levels to be able to connect a few computers and 
send text mail. Now, this has grown substantially, especially the HTTP 
protocol has been abused with HTML and on top of that, various script 
languages. Also UDP is (as far as I know) a later addition to the lower 
part of the stack to enable streaming audio/video for example.

> 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.

I agree completely.

> 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.

Mary, Mary, I agree completely. Are you really referring to *me* 
committing that error? I've argued time and time again that levels are 
not about *things*, *things* are just the collection of patterns that 
are easy to point at. Patterns are not always easy to point a finger at.

> 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.

Not sure it's more precise to only say that a thing is of the highest 
level it can experience. It's often easier to talk about it, yes, but if 
you really want to be more precise, I think we should name all levels 
below as well (even if they are implied by the dependency).


> [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.

I honestly don't think it's such a huge red flag. First of all I think 
it's a correct statement to say that the iron filings are the subject, 
but it's equally correct to say that the magnet is the subject from its 
point of view. I was formulating it that way, mostly to explain that 
there is no need for a human observer since many people here seems to 
equate subject with human. I think the quality event from ZMM is just as 
valid in each level and between each pattern who experiences another 
pattern, and that's why I think it's correct to be able to talk about 
subjects and objects.

The reason science can make theories about these lower levels that seems 
to be correct and "objective", is because these lower levels are so 
static. The higher levels that science is trying to make theories about, 
the less correct it seems to be. But as you say, it's just as correct to 
say that an iron filing experiences, or values closeness to, the magnet 
as it is to say that a person values the closeness of his children.

> [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.

Hmm.. alternate cosmologies. Perhaps we don't have the same 
understanding of those stacks. The main reason I now wanted to take up 
those stacks was to try to merge the two, quite different but yet the 
same, understandings of the levels I think I see here.

One of these understandings is represented by those who come to the 
conclusion that gravity and the theory of gravity is the same thing. 
They say, since it's impossible for me to know how gravity works other 
than through the theory of gravity, then they are the same. Before 
anyone told me about gravity, the only thing I knew was that things fell 
when I dropped them. Their only outlook at the world is via their senses 
they say. *I* am always the subject in all quality events so *I* am 
divided from the reality by that quality event. Using this view, it's 
still possible to reason using the levels. You can motivate why 
biological life, or urges, are more moral than death, and so on up 
through the levels.

Ok, the other understanding is that nature takes care of itself and 
doesn't need a human observer to motivate it about morality and why it's 
better to create life than not. In this stack, we can, (or perhaps I'm 
pretty alone here so far), find levels that doesn't assume a human being 
to taste anything or to smell, or to cooperate in social structures, or 
to represent something else using a language. All the things that the 
levels are supposed to do, they do also without humans.

For example, I've claimed a few times that a cell is a social pattern 
because it, exactly like a city, contains lots and lots of stuff that a 
city has. It has transport roads, it has a library, a city hall, waste 
disposal, energy factories, protein factories to build and repair, etc. 
etc. I can't think of a single reason why a cell shouldn't be called a 
social pattern of value, because it *values* that social structure it 
has developed.

Further, you might of course merge these stacks and simply say that a 
cell is a society just as a city, only way smaller. And that would be 
ok, because size is of no importance to the levels whatsoever. There are 
inorganic planets and stars that are billions of times larger than a 
simple biological pattern like a cell, (which is of course also biological).

But then there's also this matter of the human perspective. You can 
reason in much more concrete terms if you only see things from the human 
eye. For example, church isn't that much of a social pattern for a 
social cell. It's only valid in the human stack. But more importantly, 
if you take a biological pattern in the human stack, like hunger, that 
hunger is more moral than a higher level pattern, like a cell, in the 
universal stack. I've seen people here use such arguments to claim the 
superiority of individual free speech, or the right to carry guns, or 
whatever, over the social pattern of a country. They claim, since free 
speech, or individual freedom, is an intellectual pattern, it's more 
moral than any social pattern. But that's not true.

Stacks provide a way to solve such mysteries within the MoQ.


> 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.

Disagreement. I want to use the MoQ for all sub-human sciences as well. 
You say we only have a human perspective but I don't buy that. We have 
all sorts of inorganic instruments to our disposal. Yes, we interpret 
those readings intellectually with our human brains, but the first 
quality event when the instrument makes the measurement is for most 
instruments inorganic. From there on, it's mostly intellectual patterns 
inside the instrument and into a computer for storage and processing.

And why wait for the day we do find ET? Sounds pretty, ... boring.

> [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.

Not sure what you mean by that Tao-inspired view? Care to elaborate?


> 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.

Yes, for me, reality is quality and is made of quality events and every 
one of those requires a subject and an object, which in MoQese are both 
patterns of value of the same level. I don't see much point in 
differentiating between subject, object and pattern of value. They are 
always interchangeable in every quality event. It's is only in SOM that 
the subject must be self-aware, whatever that means. But I sense quite 
many here think that as well, that the subject in a quality event must 
be some sort of "self".

	Magnus