Hi Dan
Dan:
I am interested. Please cite the comments you have problems with and
let's see if we can hash it out.
Ok, I started by changing the subject, but then? Let's see...
P.13 (probably 13 years ago), I was discussing A.I. and if the MoQ
allowed it. If it didn't, I probably would have left there and then, but
I thought I devised a cunning way around the obvious obstacles.
I wrote:
if it is possible to get intellectual patterns of value into a computer,
Pirsig commented:
Both hardware and software are formed by intellectual patterns of value.
Then I wrote:
this would be utterly impossible because it involves skipping not only
one but two static levels.
Pirsig commented:
I don't recall saying you can't skip levels, but in this case none are
skipped. The hand that taps the computer keys is biological. The
school that taught the computer programmer how to program is social. He
had to learn programming from somebody through social interaction
unless his name is Von Neumann. But Von Neumann didn't grow up in the
jungle. Social institutions had to educate him.
Then I mentioned a team of (real) six-legged robots that were supposed
to work together as a team and help researching on remote rocks like
Mars. I argued that the team of robots could be seen as a social
pattern, because some robots had special abilities in much the same way
a city has special organs for police, school, government and so on.
So I wrote:
From now on, I’ll assume that this team really is a social pattern of
value.
Pirsig commented:
This assumption destroys the system of classification set up by the MOQ.
Social patterns are subjective. Robots are not.
Ok, let's stop here and have a closer look. His first comment about both
hardware and software being *formed* by intellectual patterns, is
somewhat subsumed in the 2nd. There, in the 2nd comment, he first
doesn't acknowledge that the the level inter-dependency must mean that
you can't skip a level. But how can a pattern of, say, the 3rd level, be
dependent on the 2nd level, and at the same time just skip it?? Doesn't
make any sense at all.
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!
Look, take a house. It has social value, right? But to have that it must
depend on biological patterns? Using the same reasoning as Pirsig, the
house is built by people, i.e. biological patterns. Ok, fine.
*BUT*! Take the series of caves at the southern tip of Spain where
Neanderthals lived some 20-30 thousand years ago. They were carved by
the sea, but were used just like a house and had just as much social
value for them as houses have for us. I bet they even reserved the
biggest and finest cave to the most important member of the clan.
So, how did that happen? If some of you don't think a house has social
value, I can come up with thousands more examples to show the same thing.
A house *has* to have a direct line of dependency through all levels
down to the rock bottom of the level ladder. Every pattern has to have
that, otherwise it falls apart and is *not* such a pattern it was, it dies.
Take a police house. Does it have social value because it's built by
people? No, it has social value because the police who keeps order in
the city work there. When the police moves to another building, which
has happened in my city twice over the last 20 years, the old building
has not the same social value it had.
When looking at what kind of patterns something is made of, it has
nothing to do with who built it, or made it. It's "metaphysically
irrelevant".
I'll rub it in some more. Take that computer that according to Pirsig
only supports intellectual patterns because it was built (formed) by
intellectual patterns. Ok, what happens if we remove some parts from
that computer, the keyboard? No, it still supports intellectual
patterns. Ok, the graphics card? Nah, we can still access the
intellectual patterns through the ethernet/WiFi connection. The memory
chip! That's it, now the computer can't run at all because it must read
its program from the memory while it's executing it, so now it can't do
anything. It's broke and doesn't support intellectual patterns anymore.
How did this happen? We destroyed it. Ok, that's cheating because we're
intellectual patterns and of course we can un-build what other
intellectual patterns once built. But what if the memory broke by
itself? It *does* happen from time to time. Then if I were to call my
computer techie Bob Pirsig on the other end, he would still claim, "no
it supports intellectual patterns because it was built by intellectual
patterns to support them". ???
Doesn't the MoQ allow things to spontaneously break all by itself? Or
even better, doesn't the MoQ allow for things to spontaneously *mend*
themselves??? I mean, it's hardly unheard of that computer components
are sensitive to both heat and moist, so the memory chip might fail if
it reaches 85C, and then it works fine again after cooling down. If it's
over 85C, the computer *doesn't* support intellectual patterns, but if
it's cooler, it *does*.
Now, please Robert Maynard Pirsig or anyone else, can you explain that?
I'm not being overly obnoxious about this. I'm just exploring what the
levels really are and how they relate to each other. But to claim that a
computer is supported by biological patterns just because a hand is
tapping the keys is, well, more like a child's riddle than metaphysics.
Oh, we haven't even touched the 3rd comment yet. First of all, I
obviously disagree with him about the social status of the robot-team.
But also, he says that social patterns are subjective.? Isn't the very
core of MoQ's message that "subjective" is *not* something we can just
end a discussion with? In SOM, we can, because in SOM, subjective is
that which every one of us has a unique and personal viewpoint of. So to
say that something is subjective means that everyone is entitled to her
own view of it.
I can guess that Pirsig has had to revert to using those terms because
he probably get endless questions about it, and to say that intellectual
and social patterns are subjective, and biological and inorganic
objective is probably the easy way out. But it's WRONG! And I hoped he
at least would have talked to us in MoQese, but I guess not.
That will have to do for now, must charge some batteries, both my
laptop's and mine. :)
Magnus
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