[MD] Unkludging the MoQ.

[David Thomas]

DMB, Bo, ---------------- All,

I find it interesting that only the two of you failed to take a face value
that I did indeed make an error and send a junk draft file I always keep in
my e-mail folder to put bits and pieces of stuff in.  Also interesting is
one says, "come back", the other, stay gone. Though it's evident from both
of your responses to "junk" and in other messages that either of you credit
my criticism with much value for either your work or Pirsig's. DMB sums it
up quite nicely.

>[DMB]
> Nobody is above critical scrutiny. But you're all attitude here. There is no
> actual critical analysis, at least as far as I can tell.

> [ZaMM Pg 72]
> But he¹s such an abominable scholar it must be through the kindness of his
> instructors that he passes at all. He prejudges every philosopher he studies.
> He always intrudes and imposes his own views upon the material he is studying.
> He is never fair. He¹s always partial. He wants each philosopher to go a
> certain way and becomes infuriated when he does not.

There are many ways to be an abominable scholar. Looking only at ideas that
support the ones you are trying to defend without looking at the weaknesses
or criticism of them is not "critical scrutiny." It only takes one bad
foundation to compromise the house above. "Kumbaya" is nice around the
campfire with S'mores, but you still have to deal with the sticky hands and
sharp sticks as the fire dies down. As I've said before, Dave, I admire your
writing and rhetorical skills.  Your attitude and critical analysis however
resemble that of a cheerleader. A gum smacking, bubble-headed, Phys-Ed
majoring, blond gay one, at that. I'll bet you have tiny titties too.:-)  So
there.  Now let's continue on with this uncritical and unwarranted attack on
RMP.

Wikipedia says first use of "kludge" was in 1962 article by Jackson W.
Granholm's  "How to Design a Kludge", which appeared in the American
computer magazine Datamation. He used it to mean,  'An ill-assorted
collection of poorly-matching parts, forming a distressing whole'. This to
my mind is the current status of the MoQ.

Based on this conclusion a few days ago I felt the only good thing to do was
to abandon any attempt to try and fix it. (This still maybe the best idea)
But for some reason I just couldn't completely let go.  So the question is,

"Might it be possible to un-kludge the design of the MoQ?"

In my previous posts I have identified some of what I consider the "poorly
matched parts", the "kludges", that are in need of redesign.

A) KLUDGE #1 Is an easy one. Organic chemistry is actually a SOM platypus
that RMP failed to clearly identify. There are only three instances of the
word "organic" in Lila. The first two provided little insight, but the third
is this doozie!

> Similarly the biological patterns of life and the molecular patterns of
> organic chemistry have a 'machine language' interface called DNA but that does
> not mean that the carbon or hydrogen or oxygen atoms possess or guide life.
(Lila pg 74)

While biology is dependent on both inorganic and "organic" chemistry, not
all "organic" chemistry requires DNA as this quote and the level diagrams
fails to make clear.  Early scientists made the same mistake in thinking all
organic chemistry was predicated on some "life force." So long as the part
"organic chemistry" prior to biology is understood to be part of the
"inorganic" level  the two bottom levels are workable.

B) KLUDGE#2   Both social and intellectual qualities are bifurcated with
some of their values appearing as patterns of the next lower level. Animal
social qualities are biological patterns of value, for example, while those
of social human animals are not. Intellectual qualities prior to Classic
Greece are either nonexistent or social qualities. IMHO Pirsig's attempt to
separate the word "intellect" from "intellectual" by claiming "intellect is
thought about anything" while "intellectual" is "abstract thought itself.."
is an unnecessary kludge. Go to Google and type in the phase "What is the
intellect?" and you will find about 6,480,000 results.  I challenge anyone
to find a reference in any credible source that claims, "intellect" means
"thoughts about anything" while "intellectual" is "abstract thought
itself.." I believe his "subtleness" falls into this category.

>[DMB-in Wave goodbye...]
> If your argument relies on the use of a term that is so off the mark that it
> can be contradicted by a common dictionary, then your argument is very weak
> indeed.

Is it any great leap that RMP the wordsmith and philosophy affectionato
would point to Classic Greece for the first intellectual. First easily
learned alphabetic written language. First "real" written history. First
serious stab at Western philosophy. Hell every history or philosophy book in
the Western world points the same way. How novel ! OK, so Aristotle tutored
Alexander the Great, but remember Greek culture went down the toilet shortly
after that and never recovered. But his claim is that Greece during this
period was the first emergence of intellectuals, the intellectual level, and
that it rightly, morally, started to or did dominated Greek culture. This is
a stretch at best. Equating, inflating, and romanticizing the influence of
thoughts of a few individuals on their culture then, though the clouds of
results they helped achieve in the ensuing millennia with the help of many
many others, are two distinctly different things. The Greeks did have a peak
cultural experience no doubt about it. And it was very, very, good for the
handful at the top, but what about the other 95%? Does 5% make a culture. I
remember, it's the Reagan Trickle Down effect that DMB is such an
affectionato of. Were most of the elite 5% intellectuals? A few maybe, but
all, men and soldiers first. It's the law. Make no doubt about it at the
their cultural apex, military might dominated Greek culture not some limp
wristed intellectuals. To say anything else is revisionist history in the
extreme.

So how would I proposed to unkludge the design of the MoQ's static levels?
First merge animal and human social qualities into one level, and then
change the emergence of the intellectual level to right around the emergence
of human social qualities. (Maybe slightly before, maybe slightly after, we
will probably never know for sure.)
Something like this:
                                                                 >written...
                                                       >oral................
                                                    >Intellectual Level>>>>|
                                                   >>social human........
                                       >>social animal.....................
                                       >>Social Level>>>>>>>>>>>>>|
                                               >>>human brain & intell...
                                     >>>animal brain & intelligence...
                      >>>Biological Level>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>|
 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Inorganic/"Organic" Level>>>> |
History of Parallel & Series Evolution of MoQ Levels>>>DQ-Present

Peirce's cable & chain metaphor (parallel strands of quality) (chains or
series of quality events) is also helpful in understanding the relationship
of patterns both in and among levels. Each level has a kajillion parallel
strands of quality. They run parallel and/or twist around not only each
other but strands at higher levels. Two free floating strands of inorganic
hydrogen get tangled up with one of oxygen wrap around several similar
strands and fall as a raindrop. My biological tomato plants slurp up that
drop and if the timing is just right tonight I'll eat that drop. Maybe that
drop even gets to rub shoulders with a wisp of intellect by floating through
my brain. But that would surely be more probable, according to Bo or DMB, if
they ate the tomato.

However, these strands are also like chains, all a series of ongoing events.
Similarly as we move into and past the biological level, life based strands
become linked and unlinked, limited by the events of "birth", "death," and
decay. While "life" may end the patterns just untangle and continue on at a
lower level. The whole purpose of life is to make good compost for other
life.

The stepped nature of the left hand side gives a relative relationship of
when in evolutionary time the level emerged. The added text above the top of
the levels is my take on the relative emergence of some of the general
strands or patterns within the levels. If you draw a vertical line straight
down from the "r" in "written" that can represent the emergence of the
"intellectual culture" of Greece not affecting the relationship of the
levels, moral order, or "the when or if" "intellectuals" emerged in any
other culture.

So why merge animal and human social qualities but not animal intelligence
with human intellect or intellectual level? I'm a fan of Jared Diamond's
work because of his multidisciplinary approach to understanding human
evolution. Instead of looking for single causes and effects he looks at
combinations of multiple parallel events interacting and evolving to cause
change. In "The Third Chimpanzee -The evolution and future of the human
animal," early in the book he has a chapter called "The Great Leap Forward."
The lead paragraphs of the chapter say this:

> "For most of the many millions of years since our linkage diverged from that
>of apes, we remained little more that glorified chimpanzees in how we made our
>living. As recently as 40,000 years ago, western Europe was still occupied by
>Neanderthals, primitive beings for whom art and progress scarcely existed. Then
>there came an abrupt change, as anatomically modern people appear in Europe,
>bringing with them art, musical instruments, lamps, trade, and progress. Within
>a short period of time, the Neanderthals were gone.

> That Great Leap Forward in Europe was probably the result of a similar leap
>that had occurred over the course of the preceding few tens of thousands of
>years in the Near East and Africa. Even a few dozen millennia, though, is a
>trivial fraction (less than 1%) of of our long history separate from ape
>history. Insofar as there was any single point in time when we could be said to
>have become human it was at that time."

Some of the changes that probably occurred during the Leap period are:

Biological:
Genetic changes in the 1.6% of genes that are different from closest
relative(s). Increased brain size and probably complexity, changes of
larynx, throat, and face muscle to make speech possible, sexual changes in
women to conceal ovulation, sexual changes in men evolving relatively large
penises and rather small testes, relative body size of sexs stabilizes with
men slightly larger that women. Relative size of newborn head and
underdeveloped brain functions require long period of care giving. Increase
in longevity.

Social:
Changes in sexual behavior from other animals private sex as apposed to
public sex appears, pair bonding becomes norm, huge increase in the number
and methods of changing their environment. Evolution, progression,
specialization in tool building and use. Spoken language probably appears.
Elderly cared for. Increased food resources through improved hunting and
including fish, seafood, and mollusks in diet. Activities that seem to
provide little survival value such as art and music appear. Religions
probably appear. Quicker and better adaption to environment and improved
diet enable population growth and increase migration speed.

All of these are inferences (educated guesses) from a rather small sample of
fossilized bones and artifacts made from stone, bone, antler, and in a few
cases wood and fabrics plus careful analysis of soil discoloration that
indicate built shelters. Trying to definitively answer, "Which came first?"
for events that happen 60,000 years ago without Rocky and Bullwinkle's Way
Back Machine is somewhat like a flea crawling up an elephant's ass with
visions of rape on its mind. But we have a whole passel of professors who
spend their whole lives doing just that.

Ok, Ok this is the standard evolutionary line that everyone has heard over
and over to the point of boredom. Why not answer the question you asked a
kajillon words ago, "So why merge animal and human social qualities but not
animal intelligence with human intellect?"

While human social evolution prior to "The Great Leap" contained a broader
selection of activities than any other single species individually these
activity are not much different or in some case not as sophisticated as
their animal brethren.  They had a greater quantity of strategies but the
quality was and is not all that different. A termite mound now is probably
more sophisticated, of higher quality at protecting and sustaining termite
life than the cities humans currently build and live in are. No transcendent
leap of social quality.

However there is not any dispute that sometime, somewhere, there was a
transcendent leap in the quality of human animal's brain to process, store,
and use information in ways that no other animals can. It doesn't really
make a whole lot of difference whether it was biological or social event or
some combination of hundreds of each the leap happened. And the best word
candidate for that leap is "intellect". And by RMP law you can't have an
emergent quality without an emergent level.

Now I'm going to take a "Great Leap" and guess one of the qualities of
thought that was essential (maybe even the initial quality) for that "Great
Leap Forward". Visual abductive reasoning. Yep circle right back to one of
the fathers of pragmatism dear old Charles Saunders Peirce. Do your research
and let me know.

Probably not enough "critical analysis" for you Dave, but we've been at
analysis, critical or not, for a long, long time I think a little "critical
synthesis" is in order. Or do we have to get into some of these p,x,y logic
diagrams like in probabilistic abduction section here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abductive_reasoning , to really flip your
trigger?

What's your favorite kludge?

Dave