Hello everyone
Jonathan Marder wrote:
>
> Hi Marco and all,
>
> MARCO
> > I agree with Jonathan:
> >
> > > systems evolve towards increasing (degrees of) freedom.
> >
> > if not, they die.
> >
> > the only possible evolution directions are:
> > 1) to entropy
> > or
> > 2) to freedom
> >
> > This is the starting point. You have to choose (!) one direction and
> claim
> > it's the right one.
>
> I feel a little bad doing this while Marco is on vaction and
> incommunicado, but I wish to state a disagreement.
> I do not accept the "entropy vs. freedom" choice. These are the same,
> not contradictory. It is one of the paradoxes of apparently "orderly"
> evolution.
>
> The overall direction is always in the direction of greater freedom AND
> greater entropy.
>
> HOWEVER, there is a choice to be made - that is the initial direction.
>
> To illustrate the point, I can go from Jerusalem DOWN to the Dead Dea or
> DOWN to the Mediterranean. These two options are different and mutually
> exclusive.
Hi Jonathan
I've held off answering Marco's post, first as he is on vacation and
second to give myself a little time to mull over his words, however
Jonathan's post intrigues me and I will attempt to clarify what I mean
when I say there are no choices to be made. If we consider initial
directions such as "up" or "down" as a choice then perhaps we should
clarify just what those directions refer to. A plane goes up in the air
and lands down on the ground from our perspective here on earth.
However, from a crew orbiting the earth in a space shuttle, the plane
would fly down below and land down below.
Now one might ask what this has to do with choices, yet it is our
perspective of things that give us the feeling of having choices; of
being free. Directions are always a matter of perspective as are
choices. A choice implies there are at least two alternatives from which
to choose yet we only have one path to walk, so we assume a choice has
been made when one or the other alternative is chosen... say we go up
instead of down, from our perspective. Yet an impartial observer may
claim our direction is down as according to his/her perspective, it is.
Who is right? Has a choice really been made? What choice was made? and
according to who? Suddenly we are thrown into a subjective realm where
reality is based purely on the perspective of the observer.
Since I am familiar with the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea (from maps
only, I've never been there) I can conceptually agree with you and
assume you are north of those places and going "down" there constitutes
a southward trip. However, from my perspective here in the States you
are traveling OVER to your ultimate destination.
Finally, the overall direction of evolution would seem to be towards
greater freedom AND greater entropy, as you state, but what exactly is
the overall direction of evolution? It's not up or down, over or across,
inward or outward. In fact, from our present day perspective evolution
is not even occurring at all and we can only assume it has from the
"fossil record". How does evolution move? According to the MOQ it rises
"up" through the levels yet again we have established that perspective
prior, thus as Roger says, there is an emotive issue involved here.
For instance, if we make a trip from here ---- to ---- there a straight
line seems best. If our course takes us from here /\/\/\/\ to
/\/\/\/\ there in a zig zag line, it would seem as if the trip would
take
much longer. Imagine though if we were to cut each zig and each zag in
half, then do it again and again until the zig zags become negligible
and our course appears for all intents and purposes as a straight line.
If one ponders this notion long enough it becomes obvious that only the
destination is important and the method of arriving, or the course we
take to get there, is not. It would seem to me that this is a good
analogy of natural selection which makes no real choices and follows no
straight lines, much to our chagrin.
Painting the BIG picture means seeing choices for what they are -- a
move from one perspective to another, arising from nowhere, flourishing
while they may and going back to the nowhere they arose from.
Thank you for your stimulating post.
Dan
ps I will get off a reply to Marco's post in few days.
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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