[MD] LC Comments

[Magnus Berg]

Hi Dan

> 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.

Yes we do!

I have spent 13 years on and off to investigate those levels and I think 
I've come up with a far better understanding than anyone has ever shown 
here.

And since this is one big issue that seems to alienate me from all the 
rest here, there's just no way for me to have a deep conversation with 
anyone anymore. It always ends here. I think the levels are for real, 
that they really do reflect the reality "out there". You try to use them 
yourself a few paragraphs down, you try to tell me what a house is made 
of and how its built by biological people, but every time you use the 
levels, you make it up as you go along. It will probably end up 
differently every time. If you, Pirsig and someone else with a similar 
understanding of the levels were to explain how a few things were built 
up by the levels, your explanations would be, if not completely, so 
substantially different. And if you were to explain it again a few 
months later, it would be different again.

What kind of a *system* is that? It's no system at all, it's just an 
ad-hoc... I don't know, fairy-tale generator.

Do you really think the MoQ can make an impact in the scientific 
community with four levels that "doesn't really reflect reality, we're 
just guessing every time we want to analyse a thing"? Shouldn't that 
*be* the aim? To make such an impact? I remember it was in the beginning 
of the Lila Squad, but it doesn't seem to be that anymore.

> 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.

Yes, I'm sorry too.

>
>> 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?

An automatic backup-program can for example read *all* intellectual 
patterns from a computer. There are countless ways for computers to 
interact with eachother without any human intervention whatsoever, just 
accept that and then try to think again how a computer supports those 
intellectual patterns.

What I was trying to explain with the house example (and with the broken 
computer) is that a thing that possesses a certain type of patterns must 
be supported by all lower patterns *at that very instant*. Whether some 
other patterns have once supported it by building it is completely 
irrelevant. It's like saying a room should be lit up because you once 
lit it up with a flashlight.

> 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.

No, not just simplistic. Metaphysically irrelevant.

> 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.

Right! But you still don't realize the relevance of that do you? At one 
instant, the computer was working and supported intellectual patterns. 
The next moment it didn't work anymore. That means that some supporting 
pattern failed, which caused a snowball effect so that the intellectual 
patterns vanished as well. But it was *not* the biological pattern "the 
computer builder" who broke it. It wasn't even the computer operator 
that caused it to fail. It failed by itself. So before it failed, the 
intellectual patterns were supported by some social, some biological and 
some inorganic patterns in the computer. After it failed, just an 
instant later, some of those patterns were gone, and so the rest above 
it failed too.

Do you now understand what I mean? Do you understand that a computer 
that supports intellectual patterns must be supported by all lower 
levels at all times, otherwise it doesn't work?

> 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.

Don't just use that old standard disclaimer. Do something about it! Make 
it work for all gedanken experiments!

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

Because subject and object is created by the Quality event.
And a Quality event is of one the levels, either intellectual, social, 
biological or inorganic.
So, at each inorganic quality event, there's a subject and an object.
At each biological quality event, there's a subject and an object.
At each social quality event, there's a subject and an object.
At each intellectual quality event, there's a subject and an object.

If Pirsig were telling the truth and all intellectual and social 
patterns were subjective and all biological and inorganic patterns were 
objective, then the only possible quality events would be:

intellectual-biological
intellectual-inorganic
social-inorganic
social-biological

That's what's wrong.

	Magnus