Hello Mark. Two replies directly. 1. A line parallel to the time-axis in some perpendicular dimension, would have a constant value as a function of time in that dimension. In an ordinary Cartesian plane, if time is the horizontal axis a line parallel to that axis would have a constant value compared to the vertical axis.
2. What I meant was that if all probabilities for a signal to follow a certain path is equal to either one or zero, in the model, the probabilities wouldn't change anymore, and then signals propagated would always use the same paths. Such a system would be able to transmit signals, but it wouldn't be able to change the way it transmits them: and such a system would have no dynamic quality in the context considered. The interesting thing with entropy is that it is an abstract concept (you don't talk about any field particles or anything, not even forces) and it is defined in different ways in different contexts, sometimes it is an amount of probability, sometimes it's heat, sometimes it's motion, sometimes it's variance and so on. When Shannon introduced the term in communication theory/information theory, it was because von Neumann had advised him to use the term. Then they use either Maxwell's Demon, or some concept of atomic proposed perpetuum mobile, to infer the connection with statistical mechanics, but that was much later. Prior to reading Pirsig's work, I had some concepts of my own. Regarding cognition, for instance, I had three levels: 1. Instinctive (egoistic) 2. Emotive (social) 3. Rational (universal) Instinctive cognitions concerns drives, such as hunger, third, sleep, sex, fright. Emotive concerns emotions which you express somehow, such as love, hate, joy, sadness and so on. Rational cognition was the servant of these two, trying to find the means to satisfy them. For values, which I thought was established arbitrarily by the social system (but so as to preserve the particular social system imposing them) I had the following questions to determine them at a personal level: 1. For what are you ready to die? (the personal meaning of live) 2. For what are you ready to perform work, without other profit than the performance? (the meaning in life) The idea was that you did all else you did in order to be able to do #2 and self-sacrifice for #1. Then, concerning science, from the "synthesist perspective", science is just a special case of art, which concerns itself with what is useful (that is rational). But here I was stuck. It felt as though I had to get into some kind of social relativism, but I didn't like social relativism. And I was also trying to go around the Cartesian dichotomy in this way. When I read Pirsig's first book, to me it seemed that he was just mystifying his own values and feelings. I just thought of him as an "over-intelligent" person, having lost contact with his emotional self and thus feeling a need to mystify it, because he couldn't find a rational way to deal with it. Perhaps this actually was so, I don't know. But with Lila, he actually solved the problem of social relativism by means of the MoQ. That's why I came to like it. /A -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of 118 Sent: den 28 oktober 2010 00:41 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [MD] The Dynamics of Value Hi A/, Nonsense or not, it's a fun read. I have some comments which I will place in your thesis(?) below. -Mark [A/] To Ham/Mark and others. To me that's just a way of categorization, and in MoQ, MoQ itself i sorted under the same category. You shouldn't be surprised to find such maps. For my part, I would probably have dismissed MoQ hadn't I been able to see any such connections. You can't really explain why science "works", if you reduce it to an intellectual pattern not corresponding to anything. [Mark's attitude] MOQ is an analogy. It should be used for ones own positive purposes, and dismissed if one does not find it useful. I have gained much from the notion of Quality especially during my formative years. Personally, I use it as a spring board for all sorts of nonsense. This do doubt annoys the purists, but I do feel I have something to add, just in my own way. [A/] Anyway. I actually expanded on the topic today. I had some different trains of thought, but this was the analogy that seemed to work best. In creating map between the two SYSTEMS OF THOUGHT (which is the way I conceive them, such systems span statement spaces), we should first find the analogy to the concept of Quality as a whole. After ponding some time, I found it to be negentropy, which is also information (in the Shannon concept). [Mark] Seems like a good starting point. I believe Pirsig used this kind of analogy and then was accused of being Theological. Some discuss posts I contributed to in the past dealt with thermodynamics, and the apparent well of negative entropy (the spark of life). [A/] Why this? Well, first of all, in ordinary science information is what the brain, as a concrete system is working with. A sound, for example, having the highest entropy (the largest variation), would be perceived as noise. The same with light, which would just be a "whiteness" and no colors. In a word of "total entropy", there wouldn't be anything at all: everything would be totally shattered and there would be no motion at all. You don't perceive the Brownian motion of the molecules in the air, which is high entropic, but you do perceive a wind, which is a low entropic motion. And so on. So I just state the relation as axiomatic: Quality -> Negentropy. Now, how should we map the division between static and dynamic? In mathematic systems theory all dynamics are functions of time. How could we conceive this? If we have a space-time (and the "space" doesn't have to consist of spatial dimensions only), then anything dynamic, is moving along some curve not parallel to the time dimension in that non-time dimension(s) considered. [Mark] Interesting use of information simplification. I have considered an interpretation of the levels as harmonics, with noise in between. I believe in your in your last sentence above you meant "static" instead of "dynamic". If not, then I do not follow. [A/] Then of course, what is static and what is dynamic depends on which dimension(s) you are considering (it's quite easy to imagine a three-dimensional Cartesian space, were a curve is parallel to the time axis in one but not the other of the other two). This would, then, be the description of static and dynamic in the frame of "static physical patterns". Which scale you chose to measure, would in any case depend upon just what kind of pattern you study. Because by measuring you are gaining some quantity of information, which it just would be cumbersome to try to compare to some absolute scale. It's better to choose some relative scale useful in the context. The amount of some dynamic pattern, would straight of be the amount of information/energy gained or paid for the measurement. A amount of a static pattern would be the different ways it could be decomposed. [Mark] I makes sense to separate DQ from SQ in terms of dimensional characteristics, such as the two dimensional world from the three. I am not quite sure where this would lead however. A similar notion could be seen in the difference between a point and a vector. (SQ and DQ). [A/] If I allow myself to oversimplify, consider the central nervous system for instance. It consists of neurons and connections between those, called synapses. The probability that a signal is propagated through any specific synapse when a neuron fire is a number between zero and one. The total number of possible connections between neurons would be a function of the number of neurons, N, f(N)=(N(N-1)/2 In this simplified particular instance, I would term this number of a maximally connected network, the amount of static patterns of the system considered. The amount of change in the probabilities of the synapses, on the other hand, would be the dynamics. To reduce the number of static patterns, you have to remove neurons, and to reduce the dynamic patterns, the system must approach the state when all probabilities are either one or zero (if you make it a discrete model, for instance, you could make a probability increase every time the synapse carries a signal and make it decrease every time the synapse hasn't carried a signal for three iterations or more). [Mark] It would be nice if the brain were that overly simple. I spent a few years studying the brain (in rats), even got some publications out. The digital analogy falls apart due to summation of input which is a result of density of connections, constant changes (adaptations) of the synaptic cleft, and so forth. There is also a chemical gradation between synapses that may delay firing, and a transmitter clean-up which affects signal transduction. But yes, either a nerve propagates an action potential or it doesn't, so a binary system is appropriate, and I see your point of making the nerves static for descriptive purposes. How information is stored by the brain is a whole 'nother subject. Probabilities of one or zero, doesn't sound like statistics to me, but what do I know. [A/] Perhaps this is just nonsense, but anyway :-) [Mark] Ditto 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 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
