[MD] LC Comments

[Dan Glover]

Hello everyone

On Sun, Jul 11, 2010 at 5:13 AM, Magnus Berg <McMagnus at home.se> wrote:
> Hi Dan
>
>> Dan:
>> Make it up as I go along? Come on. I thought you wanted to discuss the
>> RMP annotations, Magnus. And here you are being a dick.
>
> Am I? I don't know.
>
> Imagine you got an old Egyptian stone tablet from a friend for your 50th
> birthday. It was really nice in a glass cage and he told you a long
> fascinating story about where it came from, who had used it and how it came
> to be in his possession.
>
> You got so fired up by this artefact that you spent 2 years researching
> about the artefact before you finally decided to really go there and do some
> hands-on research on-site. And when you got back from the trip you spent
> another year writing a whole book about your artefact. To honour your friend
> who gave it to you, you let him proof read the book before sending it off to
> egyptologists for peer-review.
>
> But your friend said:
>
> - Hrmm.. well, Dan, this artefact I gave you, it wasn't really real. I
> actually just won it in Vegas. There are hundreds just like it. I made the
> story up on my way to your birthday party.
>
> Exactly how would that feel?
>
> Because it does feel pretty much the same to me when you say something like
> that. That the levels are not really real, doesn't reflect any reality "out
> there", etc.
>
> So, perhaps I was being a dick. But I think the circumstances are pretty
> forgiving.

Dan:
First, I didn't say the levels aren't real. But I can see how someone
could take it that way. Like John said, to take the levels as being
something concrete and "out there" is something like confusing the map
with the territory. The MOQ is a metaphysics that descibes reality. It
is not reality itself. A great deal of confusion will result if this
isn't understood. It seems common-sensical to me but it also seems
like wev'e been going over this for years and years.

The levels are real in the same sense the President of the United
States is real. If a team of doctors examined President Obama from the
top of his head to the bottoms of his feet, they'd find nothing that
told them this particular man was President as opposed to any other
man. The President is a social pattern of value that is applied to
various biological patterns at various times in history.

As per your scenario... stupid is as stupid does.



>
>
>
>>>> 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:
>> Okay. How?
>Magnus:
> When I hear that patterns of higher levels must be *supported* by lower
> levels, I take that as meaning a direct dependency, not a circumstantial.
> That a computer's intellectual patterns are supported by a person *using*
> the computer, or having built it, is circumstantial, not direct. A direct
> dependency is for example that a living cell's biological patterns are
> supported by the inorganic molecules inside that cell. If the molecules are
> dissolved somehow, physically or chemically, the inorganic patterns are gone
> and then the biological patterns goes with it and the cell dies.

Dan:
Well, I guess if you don't want the higher levels supported by the
lower levels, then we're really not talking about the MOQ, are we?

>
>
>>> 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:
>> No. No clue.
>Magnus:
> Just like the cell above. There must be a direct dependency.

Dan:

Okay... and that means... what? I don't get what you're saying at all.
I suspect we're going to have to leave it like that, unless you have
some specific problem with the annotations. So far, I don't see any.
And you are  making no sense, to me.

Dan