> [Krimel] > The molecular inventions of the Dynamic force are imbued with agency of > their own. They reciprocate, preserve, replace, they work together. How > does parsing out all of this agency explain anything? Nothing significant > about the description is altered by removing it.
[Magnus] Right! DQ is given way too much credit in these events. Attributing it to DQ makes it too easy to transform DQ into something religious. [Krimel] Pirsig fosters this view in several ways. First through out Lila he confuses DQ with Quality. Second he almost always associates DQ with something good. Third his view of evolution as running away from something bad and toward 'betterness' is a distortion. In fact DQ is change. It is wave to SQ's particle. [Magnus] I have a rather new (well, new to me anyway) idea when it comes to this, and given your last post, perhaps you have something to add to it. I suspect the basis for the biological level is how well two different molecules fit together in 3 dimensions. This is, as far as I understand, how the active part of medicines work, and it's then not very far fetched to conclude that this is also the basis for taste and smell. This would also explain why taste and smell usually triggers a more intense sensation than other senses, and can make us remember a particular piece of wood we tasted almost 40 years ago (including who was there and the weather). Those senses are the oldest and are built-into every cell of our body. The other senses, hearing, sight and touch came much later. [Krimel] I think the whole area of human sensation is greatly overlooked in these discussions. It is the chief component of the 'pre-intellectual' they are the primary building blocks of the subjective, they are the vehicle for the extracting value and for being-aware. And yet they are seldom looked at seriously. The senses you mention smell and taste are no doubt the oldest of the senses. They are the only senses we have that are connected directly to the brain. All of the other senses involve receptor cell and nerve pathways to connect them to areas where they are processed. The sense of smell does seem to produce long lasting memories that are readily associated with other sensory memories laid down at the same time as you describe. All of our senses allow us to transduce energy from the environment into electrochemical impulses in our nervous systems. The senses of smell and taste allow us to gather information from molecules in the environment. We transduce chemical energy into nerve impulses. > [Krimel] > Ian and Arlo have talked about approaches taken by theoretical physicists > to conceptualize how variations in cosmic constants might alter the > probability of life. This can be addressed to some extent through computer > simulations. > Some mix and match values for known cosmic forces. Others like Wolfram > work with artificially constructed set of rules to see how they interact > to promote complexity and growth in virtual environments. [Magnus] Haven't read much about those, but I suspect they would find the four levels in those universes as well, but in very different forms. Even if it's impossible to make heavier atoms than hydrogen, and even if a lower gravity makes it impossible to ignite stars. As long as the environment is dynamic enough to allow change, and static enough to allow things staying the same for a while, then the four levels will get to work and trigger some kind of life. [Krimel] One of the things we learned in the last half of the 20th century is that very simple rules can lead to very complex systems. This was very unexpected and runs counter the Newtonian classical Euclidian world view that many here still cling too. The Game of Life was an early computer simulation of this sort where pixels 'live' or 'die' based on three or four rules concerning the state of their neighbors. All kinds of lifelike behaviors emerge from this. Wolfram has extended this by developing more complex techniques for generating computer life forms or cellular automata. He tinkers not with the simulated life forms so much as the rules that produce them. What he finds is that certain sets of rules generate most 'lifelike' simulations than others. In these simulations growth occurs and interactions continue lmost indefinitely. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
