[Magnus] You ended your post arguing that the first cut of a metaphysics ought to be between good and bad. And as it turns out, that's exactly what Quality is about. Of course we mostly talk about good, but whatever is not good, is bad.
Ok, so everything and everyone judges and divides all experiences into good and bad ones. Lower levels, like inorganic, don't have much choice in the matter, but higher levels do. [Krimel] I was not arguing in that we "ought" to make good and bad a first cut only that we "could". Metaphysical first cuts are matters of choice not necessity. We evaluate sensory experience in terms of "good" and "bad" autonomically without conscious effort. [Magnus] When an inorganic experience happens, it always follows the good path. I.e. earth keeps circling the sun and its molten iron core keeps spinning in a slightly different pace than the rest, producing a magnetic field. [Krimel] Good and bad have no meaning at the inorganic level. It is just shit happening. As Case once said: "Nature always ambles the path of least resistance. Life's the way we shot the bird at entropy's persistence." [Magnus] But when a biological experience happens, it is also filtered through this Quality. However, the very complex inorganic stuff that is happening is producing one and only one biological judgement. And it's this biological judgement that is the whole world for the animal making the judgement call. It has no idea how it's supported by lower levels, or even that it *is* supported. It only knows, or rather feels, that this is good or this is bad and that's the whole experience. [Krimel] Right behavior can and is often genetically encoded. [Magnus] Regarding fractional dimensionality, I didn't know that about fractals. I did know about our spatial dimensions having been unfolded by the big bang, at least 3 of them, plus time being unfolded as we go along, or some such. But the string theorists still think there are 7 more that wasn't unfolded, right? [Krimel] I think they are up to 11 but who's counting? [Magnus] Anyway, first of all I don't really see that dimensions are not discrete from that example. The zooming in on a point is a gedanken experiment, but how is it connected to our spatial dimensions? [Krimel] Here is a fairly simple explanation of how dimensions can be fractional. [Magnus] Also, I can imagine that our 3 spatial dimensions are rather tightly connected. But even if they are, it doesn't really say anything about metaphysical, non-spatial, dimensions. [Krimel] The concept of extension is very important in all of this of course but virtual worlds have special dimensions that do not have extension. My home world of Norrath is vast yet is unextended. [Magnus] And, on the absurdity about the level conflicts and lower levels always winning. That's not as absurd as it might seem and that's because lower levels are much more static than higher. In other words, higher levels can *count* on lower levels behaving as expected. But of course lower levels will always win if they really misbehave. [Krimel] I think the levels in the MoQ are a mess and Andy nailed them correctly earlier today with a comment something like we create levels on the fly. I have used that terminology several times in the past. Pirsig's claims that "level" are discrete and that they have conflict are just obviously false. Like all systems of levels they may have heuristic value, they kind of work as rules of thumb but they all break down when you try to put too much weight on them. Ten years of haggling ought to convince anyone that Pirsig's levels are particularly brittle in this respect. 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
