Marco,
Below are some musings on your principles, and a half-hearted suggestion on
the 4th.
Basic principle: Better is Better.
1st Principle: Something is better than Nothing
Agreed. That which lasts has more value than that which doesn't. Or, to
quote Steve Grand from his book Creation, "Things that persist, persist.
Things that don't don't." The patterns of physics that are the platform for
future quality advance are those patterns that are stable and lasting. The
study of the laws of physics is the study of patterns that persist and how it
is that they persist against a background of decay and chaos.
2nd Principle: Alive is better than Dead
Agreed. To continue my prior point, Richard Dawkins once wrote that there
are two broad types of things making up our universe, those that are durable,
and those that are generatable. Protons and stars are of the former type --
once formed, they tend to last billions of years. Dewdrops and clouds are of
the latter type -- they last a short time, but they are continuously
regenerated. Life uses the best of both tricks. It forms stable yet dynamic
patterns that can regenerate and multiply. Finally, life can learn or adapt.
It becomes a search algorithm for betterness.
3rd Principle: Together is better than Alone
Agreed. Society continues a long tradition of symbiosis, specialization and
cooperation that occurs biologically in complex, multi-cellular organisms as
well as between organisms and within ecosystems. However, it takes it to a
new level that can learn and adapt orders-of-magnitude faster than life. Of
course, as is true of the prior level as well, competition also plays a key
role by constantly "raising the bar" of betterness and by providing
alternative sources for betterness.
4th Principle: Individuality is better than conformity
Hmmm. It seems each of the prior levels is about a type of stability, with
each gaining in versatility and adaptiveness. I would argue that the
intellectual level is about the stability and evolution of ideas themselves.
Some or most of these ideas are of course applied back to the prior levels to
improve life and society and to better understand the universe. Your
individuality concept gets to the important elements of versatility,
creativity and the free exchange/competition of ideas, but it misses
something as well. I think that I would lean more toward... "Good ideas are
better than bad ones."
This would thus lead us to:
Basic principle: Better is Better.
1st Principle: Something is better than Nothing
2nd Principle: Alive is better than Dead
3rd Principle: Together is better than Alone
4th Principle: Good ideas are better than bad ones
But, who knows?
Rog
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:01:52 BST