[MD] Stacks

[Magnus Berg]

> [Krimel]
> Odd that on a forum littered with pragmatists you would be uncomfortable
> with using usefulness as a criteria.

The word implies there is a limit as to how far the usefulness can be 
stretched. I don't like that limit. Especially since the limit seems 
very personal.

> [Krimel]
> I don't know what you are getting at here. I also don't see much difference
> in your usage between the terms stack and level.

Hang on, I'm working on a visual drawing that will hopefully clear that 
up a little.

> [Krimel]
> I'll stick with this one a little longer before moving on. BIOS chips are
> one example of firmware which as its name implies lies on the fuzzy
> borderland between hardware and software. As the wiki article on firmware
> confirms: "There are no strict boundaries between firmware and software, as
> both are quite loose descriptive terms." So sure you could insist that it is
> software or you could insist that it is hardware but in either case your
> decision is arbitrary and not forced by some underlying necessity.

BIOS chips doesn't even come close to a border. Come on. A BIOS chip is 
simply memory containing a computer program. Sometimes its content can't 
be changed (ROM), but most often you can change it by reflashing it with 
a new BIOS version.

Also firmware goes the same way. It's just a low level computer program 
made to provide higher level programs with the function calls required 
to use the hardware for which the firmware is written.

Both firmware and BIOS are often written in C, but of course compiled to 
assembler which is the "Machine Language Instruction Repertoire" Pirsig 
mentions in Lila. That's the stack border I'd like to use for the lower 
end of the computer stack, and it's quite crisp.

However, the computer stack *is* an artificial stack, and as such, I 
wouldn't bet on each level in it being as discrete as in the universal 
stack.

> [Magnus]
> The thing is, if we chose our level borders carefully, and make the two
> levels orthogonal and mutually irrelevant, platypus kinds of unfitting
> things become impossible.
>
> [Krimel]
> Beyond specific example of fuzzy borders there is a certain futility in the
> very act of attempting to render continuous reality, discrete. This is the
> problem of percepts and concepts which I described to dmb yesterday. Here is
> a quote from William James that is especially telling in this case:
>
> "Although, when you have a continuum given, you can make cuts and dots in
> it, ad libitum, enumerating the dots and cuts will not give you your
> continuum back. The rationalist mind admits this; but instead of seeing that
> the fault is with the concepts, it blames the perceptual flux."
>
> All you are doing in attempting to force discrete boundaries on continuous
> processes is piling arbitrary definition upon more arbitrary definition. In
> the end all you are doing is creating an endless playground for
> disagreements.

So you and James assume reality is continuous, but the fact is that it's 
not.

As I've said before, you *can* find discrete level borders. If you have 
a pre big bang reality in which there's no space, no time, no mass and 
no energy. How would you extend the stuff of that reality continuously 
to construct space? It's simply not possible.

It's the same thing with other borders such as the chemical vs. 3D fit 
organic border I've suggested. If chemical laws would be ruling the 
oceans of the earth, no biological stuff would ever have evolved. It 
would just be a chemically neutral and very dead soup.

	Magnus