[MD] Stacks

[Mary]

Hi Magnus,

A nice discussion.  Thank you.

[Magnus before]
> 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".

Subjects and objects are only patterns of value of the same level where the
object is also an intellectual thought.  Are you saying you are an Idealist?
If so, I understand your statement, since in that case, everything is in our
heads, created by man alone and would thus be on the same level.  I don't
think this is what you are saying, though.

You are saying the iron filings could be a subject and the magnet an object?
That is not the same as Subject-Object Logic since iron filings do not
think; however, for you to describe them that way is an example of
Subject-Object Logic.

To be honest, I see the stacks analogy as a SOM approximation of the static
levels model.  An imperfect approximation especially when it comes to the
upward relationship.

Best,
Mary

> 
> 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
> 
> 
> 
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