Howdy, list. Please excuse any fox paws in this, my first MD post. I am re-reading both of Pirsig's books after years away, so some of the bases for my thoughts are fresh while others are still quite dusty.
> dmb to Magnus: > > Biological patterns INSIDE the computer? Seriously? It seems you have a > fairly bizarre position. I mean, as far as I know there is no such thing as a > computer that operates with social or biological patterns inside it. This thread about computers "supporting" MoQ levels above inorganic has yanked me out of newbie lurk mode. My thoughts take two orthogonal tracks. First, the "organic" level is not necessarily limited to or defined by what we have found and classified as "life" in the universe. Second, the reality of any given thing under Quality cannot be considered to exist without a second referent to provide point of view. To follow the first track, first review what constitutes biology or life. Pooping is not a defining characteristic. An organism that accumulates all of its waste until death or outsources its energy production is still an organism. I say that a biological pattern it is any pattern that tends toward self-perpetuation despite adversity. Atoms and most molecules do not qualify but DNA is such a pattern. In a favorable environment, DNA perpetuates its pattern by building defenses and making copies of itself. These activities are the result of molecule-manipulating programs embedded in the DNA. We are capable of manipulating DNA and thus capable of rudimentary hacking of biological programs. (Please correct me if I need correction on the biological level.) This definition of the biological level does not necessarily exclude patterns invented or circulated by man. We have already seen man-made self-perpetuating patterns in the wild: computer viruses. These patterns are self-replicating in that they can spawn viable copies of themselves in favorable environments. To varying degrees, they exploit their environment despite adversity. To varying degrees, they take part in communication of information about their environments, so they can be said to have a social level. To varying degrees, they have been programmed to mutate to gain advantage against other patterns in their environment. The fact that one can easily defeat the pattern by pulling the plug is no proof against its being biological as the same effect could be applied to you by suffocation. So you could say that a computer "supports" biological patterns in that a computer "is a suitable medium for" biological patterns. This is no different from saying that the ocean supports life, if you can suspend whatever social or theological precepts prevent you from attributing to man the ability to breathe life into matter, at least outside of polite company. I am too fuzzy on the second novel to embark on any proof that we have created self-supporting intellectual patterns in electronic computers. That will be in my mind as I study. The second track is more firmly grounded in the first novel, with which I am currently becoming reacquainted. Consider an unpowered computer lying in a dark closet with nobody around to see it. Does it exist? At what levels? If it is online and connected to the internet and communicating with other computers, yet nobody is aware of it at this specific moment, does it exist? At what levels? Let me make it more concrete. At the present moment in your time frame, you are reading these words from a screen (or hearing them from an assistive device) and suspending your knowledge that the symbols ride on signals composed of electronically controlled pixels (or vibrations of speaker membranes) that convey symbols from me to you across thoroughly inorganic air. The medium of communication need not have the capabilities of the participants. That we have interposed electronic computers in our communication loop is no more significant than had we had this discussion via paper or smoke signals or mind melding. Smoke is no more capable than a computer is of "being" intellectual, yet both are capable of conveying patterns between intellectual beings. Notwithstanding the first track above, the computer that sits before you does not support anything so complex as an intellectual pattern as you understand it. The existence of an intellectual pattern in a being presupposes an environment of physical, biological, and social patterns upon which to exist, plus all of the "a priori" stuff necessary to make it intelligible. Ultimately, the maximum level perceivable in a given being by any other being is a dependent variable rather than an absolute. There can be no canon about it. Once you admit that your evaluations are only your own and understand that any universality is illusory, you can get down to the business of using the system for something practical other than confusing your friends. Andy 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/md/archives.html
