[MD] Levels in electronic computers

[Krimel]

Magnus, Arlo, Andy, Ian and Whoever;

I think there is an important issue Magnus is missing at least with respect
to fractal boundaries. One of the major points Mandelbrot was making is that
dimensions themselves are not discrete. "Fractal" is actually a made up word
contracted from fractional dimensionality. I think it was Mandelbrot who
used an example of this similar to your cube example. He said imagine a
point that when you zoom in on it turns out to be the end of a strand of
yarn which twists into a circle and then balls up into a sphere. The object
under observation is not zero, one two or three dimensional is has a
fractional dimensional value. 

Also, in your example, in order to shift position, in order to see the
square as a cube, you have to be able to pan over to a vantage point where
the difference is detectable. Thus in order to perceive things in three
dimensions you have to exist in four.

But from an ontological standpoint the only sense we have that actually
gives us direct experience of three dimensions is touch. Constructing 3D
from sight is always a perceptual process as the information is always
presented to us on the 2D surface of our retinas.

Arlo makes an interesting comparison between fuzzy sets and fractal
boundaries which probably doesn't hold up mathematically but is a good
analogy. All of this goes to show what I consider to be the futility of
Pirsig's ideas about levels. It is all well and good as an outline but the
claim that the levels are discrete or that they are somehow not entirely
arbitrary strikes me as wrongheaded. Even his selection of level and where
he draws their boundaries is questionable. 

I have not been following this discussion as closely as I might but it seems
that this boundary confusion has arisen in the issue of life in machines.
Pirsig's inorganic level kind of makes sense but in constructing the second
level as "biological" he flubs it. Organic chemistry is carbon chemistry so
the molecular structure of biological processes gets relegated to the
inorganic level even though it is organic by definition. Perhaps Pirsig
sought to skate around this discrepancy by using the term biological but the
border between inorganic and organic is much sharper that the fuzzy border
between inorganic and biological.

If there is a bit of absurdity in even the drawing of boundaries between
levels, it gets amplified in the absurd notion that the levels are in
conflict with one another. If there is such a conflict the lower level will
always "win". The existence of higher levels depends entirely on the static
qualities of the lower level. DQ in the inorganic level will wipe out all
quality at the biological level and so forth. Of course this takes us into
the larger issue that DQ is NOT always good, better or best. Quite often it
is disastrous. Perhaps if one really wanted to construct a metaphysics of
morality then the "first cut" ought to be between "good" and "bad". That is
certainly the way we construct the world automatically ontologically.

Nice discussion though. Case tells me he is think of revising one of his
pithy sayings to:

Pan and zoom in,
Pan and zoom out,
Refocus.

Krimel