LS Re: Quality Event


Bodvar Skutvik (skutvik@online.no)
Wed, 12 Nov 1997 17:32:02 +0100


Hello Doug and TLS. You wrote:

> There are several topics of discussion for TLS which I wanted to bring
> up in the recent past, but I had no easy way to broach them. Maggie's
> magnificent application of MoQ in her real, everyday work environment,
> her request for help, and Bo's superb responses gave some grist for the
> topics I want to share and discuss with all of you.

Doug, I have printed your acronym list, but still, couldn't you
start by using the long names (with the short version in brackets)?

> Richard Dawkins (his name has recently appeared in other posts here)
> invented the term 'meme.' Meme is an idea or concept which propagates
> in sentients as a (good and/or bad) viral thought. It latches in minds
> and then experiences DQ and mutates much in the way we have discussed
> the QE process recently. I see almost all of our contributions as
> potential memes. I resisted broaching several topics because they may
> be distracting memes. I feel some burden of responsibility in sharing
> and addressing these topics with you.

I know Richard Dawkins. I have his "River out of Eden" book
(regrettably still unread) and have heard about his "Selfish Gene"
idea. How his ideas apply to the MOQ I haven't thought of - yet -
but the meme concept you speak of sounds reasonable both SOMish and
MOQish.

> > You will notice that the cited passage similar to the "getting
> > hotter" on page 233 (of my Corgi paperback).
 
> I could not find this. Please send the exact quote.
 
The passage is at the end of chapter 19 while climbing, and starts
with: ......"He noted that although normally you associate Quality
with objects, feelings....". It goes on until Chris shouts
"Blue sky!".

> On the trinity, I think Pirsig retained it and described it in Lila as,
> "The value is between the stove and the oaths. Between the subject and
> the object lies the value." Page 76 of the Bantam paperback. This is
> sVo and SOQ, do you agree?
 
Pirsig used the word "trinity" in ZMM, but not in LILA. The objection
from my side is the term's implication of three equally
real/important entities. (as in the Christian religion). Yes, you are
correct about the "Hot Stove" example, but this is also an interim
stage, he soon goes on to say that only value is.

> I did not do this, as you said above: 'Then Doug enters his favourite
> field of quantum mech. and compare the MoQ with complementarity and say
> that QE corresponds to what Bohr calls "observation".' Look carefully.
> I quoted Pirsig's words directly from the SODV paper. Pirsig said that,
> I did not! As it happens, I agree with that view. Based on modern QM
> it is correct. I see this and I think Pirsig does too.

I know, I know and you are right in reminding me of it, but I have
just pointed to my gut feeling that in this paper Pirsig bends over
backwards to try to make himself understood. He was in fact invited
to a follow-up conference in Copenhagen in 1995, but declined saying
that ..The MOQ wasn't suited for that kind of dialectic exchange

> .....transcribe SOM to MoQ and vice versa (mandatory for context retention).
> We need to be able to move back and forth at will. One of you has
> already said this, 'I wish SOM would just go away, but it won't!' So we
> must not fear SOM. We must subsume it in that tiny corner of the MoQ
> where it belongs. MoQ is BETTER than SOM!

I agree totally. I say in my essay that in a MOQ future the SOM
terms will be used, but in a more relative sense, somewhat similar to
the transformation that befell the UP/DOWN pair when Medieval
cosmology was replaced by the Copernican one.
 
 
> Bo, you are concerned about some of us falling back into SOM. More
> important than that, I think we need to worry about helping the
> SOM-landers ascend into MoQ. Pirsig and we need the SOQ metaphor to do
> that! Once you achieve that, sVo takes you to the next step -- Wow!

Yes, definitely, I am now unable to return to the SOM way of
thinking even if I try.

> What do you think, Bo? Does this make sense?

Yes, lots of sense. After this I have no worry that you,
Doug, have missed any points. Thanks for launching this
clarification "mission", and for bearing with my
self-appointed role as the "Great Inquisitor".

> The atomic SPoVs are very stable, IMO, but their
> interactions/interrelations and interpenetrations are highly dynamic.
> This is also true for the subatomic SPoVs categorized broadly as bosons
> (~Subjects) and fermions (~Objects).
> If I recall the longest predicted life of some infinitesimal patterns
> (esp. photons, electrons, gravitons, and neutrinos) is infinite.
 
Yes, the interactions between the stable particles have
produced the known matter forms. A more MOQish way of
saying it is that the inorganic patterns are matter (however exotic)
Your equation of bosons=subjects and fermions=objects I have
reservations about (isn't that just a difference in spin numbers?).
The Static Inorganic Level don't distinguish between ordinary
particles and "force carrying" particles, nor is their life span
substantial. (If this is what you say? I am a bit rusty in this
field at the moment)

> Bo, thank you for your recent awesome contributions.

Same to you Doug. Up through the years it was as if I were alone with
the quality ideas. Then less than a year ago there was a very welcome
greeting from Platt Holden (after he had found my web essay),
and there were two of us! One hundred percent increase! Later a
trickle of mail from Pirsig fans arrived, and suddenly the
Lila Squad where I learned that there have been other small groups
and individual pirsigites all the time. To find oneself discussing
the finer points of the quality idea - even the luxury of disagreeing
from time to time is sheer ....abundance. Maggie spoke of a similar
experience; from loneliness to swimming in it (drowning perhaps :-) ?
TLS will eventually come to an end (all mailing-lists do), but
things will not be the same again.

Bo.

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