[MD] LC Comments

[Dan Glover]

On Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 5:20 AM, Magnus Berg <McMagnus at home.se> wrote:
> Hi Dan
>
>> Dan:
>>
>> I am interested. Please cite the comments you have problems with and
>> let's see if we can hash it out.
>
> Ok, I started by changing the subject, but then? Let's see...
>
> P.13 (probably 13 years ago), I was discussing A.I. and if the MoQ allowed
> it. If it didn't, I probably would have left there and then, but I thought I
> devised a cunning way around the obvious obstacles.
>
> I wrote:
> if it is possible to get intellectual patterns of value into a computer,
>
> Pirsig commented:
> Both hardware and software are formed by intellectual patterns of value.

Dan:
This seems clear.

>Magnus:
> Then I wrote:
> this would be utterly impossible because it involves skipping not only one
> but two static levels.
>
> Pirsig commented:
> I don't recall saying you can't skip levels, but in this case none are
> skipped.  The hand that taps the computer keys is biological.  The school
> that taught the computer programmer how to program is social.  He had to
> learn  programming from somebody through social interaction unless his name
> is Von Neumann.  But Von Neumann didn't grow up in the jungle.  Social
> institutions had to educate him.

Dan:
Again, I see nothing out of the ordinary here... seems like a good answer.

>Magnus:
> Then I mentioned a team of (real) six-legged robots that were supposed to
> work together as a team and help researching on remote rocks like Mars. I
> argued that the team of robots could be seen as a social pattern, because
> some robots had special abilities in much the same way a city has special
> organs for police, school, government and so on.
>
> So I wrote:
> From now on, I’ll assume that this team really is a social pattern of value.
>
> Pirsig commented:
> This assumption destroys the system of classification set up by the MOQ.
>  Social patterns are subjective.  Robots are not.

Dan:
Exactly. Nothing to argue about here.

>
>Magnus:
> Ok, let's stop here and have a closer look. His first comment about both
> hardware and software being *formed* by intellectual patterns, is somewhat
> subsumed in the 2nd. There, in the 2nd comment, he first doesn't acknowledge
> that the the level inter-dependency must mean that you can't skip a level.
> But how can a pattern of, say, the 3rd level, be dependent on the 2nd level,
> and at the same time just skip it?? Doesn't make any sense at all.

Dan:
Let's begin by saying the levels in the MOQ are provisional... they
describe reality but we won't actually find levels "out there" to
examine and investigate.

Second, I don't see any "skipping" here and I am not really sure what
you mean. All social patterns are dependent on biological patterns.

Finally, the MOQ doesn't "allow" anything. The MOQ is a set of
intellectual patterns of value that describe reality... it is not
reality itself that can dictate what is allowed and what is not. This
line of reasoning doesn't make sense to me. I'm sorry.


>Magnus:
> Then, he continues with something, I don't know what to call it without
> sounding disrespectful, but the word lame is what I really mean. Anyway,
> "The hand that taps the computer keys is biological."?? Come on! We're
> trying to be serious here but *that's* disrespectful!

Dan:
My hand is biological. How do we interact with the computer but
through tapping keys on the keyboard?

I guess you're saying you feel RMP's annotation is overly simplistic
and disrespectful. Okay. Point taken. I prefer short and elegant to
long and windy but we all have our preferences.

>Magnus:
> Look, take a house. It has social value, right?

Dan:
My house has biological value too, at least to me... it keeps me warm
in the winter, keeps the rain off my face while I sleep, it protects
my biological presense. That is what a house is all about, isn't it?


Magnus:
But to have that it must
> depend on biological patterns? Using the same reasoning as Pirsig, the house
> is built by people, i.e. biological patterns. Ok, fine.

Dan:
I recall reading a story about some of the gene splicing experiments
going on now and how it might be possible in the future to just "grow"
a house instead of growing the lumber to build it with.


>Magnus:
> *BUT*! Take the series of caves at the southern tip of Spain where
> Neanderthals lived some 20-30 thousand years ago. They were carved by the
> sea, but were used just like a house and had just as much social value for
> them as houses have for us. I bet they even reserved the biggest and finest
> cave to the most important member of the clan.
>
> So, how did that happen?

Dan:
I don't know. I wasn't there, or maybe I was and I just don't
remember. But I don't understand what you're trying to say...


Magnus:
If some of you don't think a house has social
> value, I can come up with thousands more examples to show the same thing.

Dan:
Of course a house has social value... celebrity is the driving force
of the social level... the biggest most expensive homes go to the
richest among us. I imagine it has always been that way, don't you?

>Magnus:
> A house *has* to have a direct line of dependency through all levels down to
> the rock bottom of the level ladder. Every pattern has to have that,
> otherwise it falls apart and is *not* such a pattern it was, it dies.
>
> Take a police house. Does it have social value because it's built by people?
> No, it has social value because the police who keeps order in the city work
> there. When the police moves to another building, which has happened in my
> city twice over the last 20 years, the old building has not the same social
> value it had.
>
> When looking at what kind of patterns something is made of, it has nothing
> to do with who built it, or made it. It's "metaphysically irrelevant".

Dan:
No, it's not. A house is a set of patterns of value... there are the
inorganic parts that make up the place... wood, steel, aluminum, etc.,
and there are the biological people who take these inorganic materials
and design and build, and then there are the real estate agents who
play up the social status of owning a house, and not just any house...
this house... and finally, there's the buyer, who makes up their mind
intellectually to buy this particular house over all the others.

>Magnus:
> I'll rub it in some more. Take that computer that according to Pirsig only
> supports intellectual patterns because it was built (formed) by intellectual
> patterns. Ok, what happens if we remove some parts from that computer, the
> keyboard? No, it still supports intellectual patterns.

Dan:
My cat Chomsky likes to piss all over my keyboard. I don't know why.
I've talked to him about it but he keeps on. I think he's jealous of
the attention I pay it. I kid you not. But anyway, every once in a
while, certain keys will quit working and I'm limited to the
intellectual imput I can install on my hard drive. It still supports
certain patterns but not all patterns. You see?

Magnus:
Ok, the graphics
> card? Nah, we can still access the intellectual patterns through the
> ethernet/WiFi connection. The memory chip! That's it, now the computer can't
> run at all because it must read its program from the memory while it's
> executing it, so now it can't do anything. It's broke and doesn't support
> intellectual patterns anymore. How did this happen? We destroyed it. Ok,
> that's cheating because we're intellectual patterns and of course we can
> un-build what other intellectual patterns once built. But what if the memory
> broke by itself? It *does* happen from time to time. Then if I were to call
> my computer techie Bob Pirsig on the other end, he would still claim, "no it
> supports intellectual patterns because it was built by intellectual patterns
> to support them". ???

Dan:
We built the goddamn thing and you're saying we can't fix it? Huh.
Stuff breaks down all the time. It's the nature of patterns. They
arise, flourish, and pass away. Look around you, Magnus. Is there any
permanence? I see none.

>Magnus:
> Doesn't the MoQ allow things to spontaneously break all by itself? Or even
> better, doesn't the MoQ allow for things to spontaneously *mend*
> themselves???

Dan:
I don't know, Magnus. It looks to me alike you're saying the MOQ is
some kind of set-in-stone metaphysics that only allows for certain
things. It is not. The MOQ is a Dynamic document. It will work until
something better comes along.

Magnus:
 I mean, it's hardly unheard of that computer components are
> sensitive to both heat and moist, so the memory chip might fail if it
> reaches 85C, and then it works fine again after cooling down. If it's over
> 85C, the computer *doesn't* support intellectual patterns, but if it's
> cooler, it *does*.

Dan:
It's been my experience that a computer either works or it don't. It
doesn't "support" anything. It is a machine. It's not alive.

>Magnus:
> Now, please Robert Maynard Pirsig or anyone else, can you explain that?

Dan:
Explain what, exactly?

>Magnus:
> I'm not being overly obnoxious about this. I'm just exploring what the
> levels really are and how they relate to each other. But to claim that a
> computer is supported by biological patterns just because a hand is tapping
> the keys is, well, more like a child's riddle than metaphysics.

Dan:
A computer doesn't just spontaneously appear out of nowhere, does it?
I had to pay for mine. Someone built it, someone else shipped it,
someone else programmed it, and I have to turn it on and use it. Now,
if that's not being supported by biological patterns, then what is?

>
>Magnus:
> Oh, we haven't even touched the 3rd comment yet. First of all, I obviously
> disagree with him about the social status of the robot-team. But also, he
> says that social patterns are subjective.? Isn't the very core of MoQ's
> message that "subjective" is *not* something we can just end a discussion
> with? In SOM, we can, because in SOM, subjective is that which every one of
> us has a unique and personal viewpoint of. So to say that something is
> subjective means that everyone is entitled to her own view of it.

Dan:
I think dmb answered this very well with the example of the
President... please see his post.

>Magnus:
> I can guess that Pirsig has had to revert to using those terms because he
> probably get endless questions about it, and to say that intellectual and
> social patterns are subjective, and biological and inorganic objective is
> probably the easy way out. But it's WRONG! And I hoped he at least would
> have talked to us in MoQese, but I guess not.

Dan:
Subjective and objective are shorthand terms for patterns of value.
How is that wrong?

Take care, and thanks,

Dan