[Ron] Thanks Arlo, looking forward to the read. as far as oops v.s. aha! I'm an oops, It just feels more genuine, oops is an oops but an aha, is in the eye of the beholder (or beer holder).
[Arlo] Give Krimel credit for the "AHA!" revisioning of "oops". Me, I don't mind either, for they both convey the same lack of "pre-intention" that some want to ascribe to Quality. That is, I don't see any evidence for a preconceived "design" that was then "enacted". There are dynamic advances, and those that bring some benefit (determined in very contextual, local ways) become statically latched. In hindsight we see patterns and assume "someone must have pre-designed all this", but that's just illusion in my opinion. Consider that the world got along quite nicely without "man" for hundreds of millions of years (billions, if you go all the way back). "Man" only exists because of happenstance events. "Man" was not "planned to be here". The world was not "designed for man to rule". "Man" may not even be here much longer (geological time). In a million years it could very well be another species, with some dynamic advancement we can't even begin to forsee. The problem is we can only really see "what worked" when we look out and back into the past. We can't see all the dynamic gains that were lost, or destroyed or for some reason never were successful. We see "that Dynamic forces seized the carbon atom", but that's only after billions of years of who-knows-what that it "appears" that way. Despite the tired protests, the MOQ is indeed very much emergentist. "Single" biological patterns emerge from the complex interactions of smaller inorganic patterns. There is nothing on the inorganic level that presupposes the biological level. Atoms did not conspire to "invent" molecules. This simple relationship, where the interactions of "simpler" patterns gives rise to more complex patterns that can not be predicted nor forseen from the previous level, is about as MOQ as you can get. From Wikipedia. "An emergent behaviour or emergent property can appear when a number of simple entities (agents) operate in an environment, forming more complex behaviours as a collective." This one sentance captures the entirety of the MOQ's relational levels. Simpler patterns enganged in collective activity form more complex patterns, eventually giving way to not just something "more complex" but something entirely new. Unplanned. Undesigned. Not pre-conceived or pre-ordained. Whether "oops" or "AHA!" the moment of emergence was not something some external "thing" planned to have happen, nor was it something the simpler patterns themselves planned to have happened. Ian, if I recall, was a little more friendly to the metaphor of "intelligent design" than I care to be. And Gav apparently likes it quite a bit. Me, I see that metaphor as conveying way too much "intent" (in the sense of a preconceived "plan" that was "enacted" to be "just so"). Platt obviously digs it because it gives him the "God" he wants to have bolstering his worldview where "man" exists in a privileged plane of being, and "not-man" hardly matters at all (except as how it can be used by "man"). Like you, I consider "oops" (and "AHA!") to be genuine, and hardly derogatory to the human condition. Indeed, as Steve Johnson makes the case, it is far more exciting and value-laden than the "I need to be the planned, zenith-residing creation of an external force" crowd. 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.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
