Hi Case, actually it's Magnus, not Mangus.
Anyway,
> [Case]
> This is an interesting analysis. If not edges, then specific points of
> departure. So for example where would you say that the inorganic becomes
> discrete from the biological?
Both the terms "specific points of departure" and "becomes discrete", imply
some
sort of border where one level ends and the other starts. But that misses the
point. The point is that a *thing* can have value in more than one level.
I realize you're fishing after where I think the biological level begins in
terms of biological entities such as amino-acids, proteins or cells. But all
those *things* have both inorganic and biological value, so they are 2
dimensional in the MoQ level space.
For example, take a protein. A protein has mass and has therefore inorganic
value. It also has a bunch of other inorganic values such as color, inertia,
etc. But a protein has also biological value, because an animal in need of
proteins will value the protein very dearly. It won't lose its inorganic values
just because it has biological value, it still has the same mass, inertia and
color. On the other hand, this protein has no biological value to the sulfur
based life at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean.
> [Mangus]
> My interpretation of this is that they are orthogonal. Think of the
> inorganic level as an X-axis extending to the right. When it's complex
> (long) enough, the biological level can extend upwards on the Y-axis forming
> a 2D plane. The social level extends the 2D plane into a 3D cube and the
> intellectual turns it into a 4D hypercube. Such an arrangement makes the
> levels absolutely dependent on each other and makes each type of value very
> easy to spot. There's no fuzzy borders between the levels, they just go off
> in completely different directions.
>
> [Case]
> So what would this kind of graphing tell you?
It tells me that what we usually call a *thing* (living or dead), can be more
accurately described using the 4 MoQ levels than any other system of
classification. Because other systems of classification usually end up
contradicting itself, or placing the *thing* in several contradicting
"compartments" or nodes, causing what Pirsig calls a Platypus. But since the
MoQ
levels are orthogonal, they can't contradict each other. It's perfectly fine to
assign several types of values to a thing.
> [Magnus]
> And to be honest, I frankly don't see why most people tend to treat the
> levels as just one long one-dimensional line (along some sort of complexity
> axis). Because, as you say, it just turns the levels into arbitrary
> abstractions. In a one-dimensional view of the levels, each *thing* can only
> belong to one level. But that's the reason it becomes so fuzzy and causes
> headaches. In a multi-dimensional view, each *thing* have a 4-tuple
> coordinate placing it in 1, 2, 3 or 4 levels at once.
>
> [Case]
> This is one source of my problem with levels in general. What makes these
> particular levels more special than others? There are all sorts of
> dimensions you could pick to plot this way.
I'm not very sure about this statement, but doesn't most systems of
classification usually divide all objects it tries to sort into two or more
piles (Pirsig talks about this somewhere, doesn't he?) Then it continues to
divide those piles into smaller and smaller piles. The problem comes when you
after a couple of steps encounter an object belonging to more than one pile.
Because there's often an underlying assumption that every object should belong
to one pile and one pile only.
But of course you can plot all sorts of dimensions this way. But the point is
that the MoQ static levels are organized this way. Never mind that many other
systems are as well.
> [Case]
> How did that work out for you in the old days? I keep getting told that DQ
> is undefined and we are not allowed to talk about it except in warm fuzzy
> terms.
Never really had a problem with it here, but I see your point. But I don't
think
I commit a MoQ sin when I do. Saying that something changes doesn't say much
about what it changes into, so it's still pretty fuzzy and unknown.
Magnus
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