...After over one year lurking finally de-lurk finally happens...
I can't quite re-find who wrote it, but defining what constitutes a
level in general seems like a very good starting point for trying to
understand what a fifth level might be.
Most of MoQ talks about a how a higher level uses/sees it's lower
level and tries to control it, but perhaps we should look more at how
a higher level is perceived by a lower level, as this is what we're
doing.
One of my first reactions to the undefineableness of Quality (I guess
back in ZAMM) was that Quality may be definable, but somehow outside
our universe, like a separate dimension. When trying to fathom the
fourth dimension (spacial, not including time) at high school, I was
fascinated by the technique (from "Cosmos"?) of thinking of how
two-dimensional people (flatlanders) would regard 3D objects/people.
These flatlanders (on a flat planet) would see 3D people
appearing/disappearing (since they could move "up" and come "down"
somewhere else. A flatlander on a large spherical planet could walk
until he came back to where he started, and could make a triangle
with three 90 degree angles etc. Notice how the higher level wouldn't
seem to contain "truth" and be definable to this persons
understanding.
What's important here is that this helped me understand how the
universe is 3D space wrapped around a 4D ball that's expanding.
Simularly, if we analyze how the social level perceives the
intellectual level, we can perhaps move some of that knowledge one
step up.
I sometimes wonder if the whole dimension way of looking at each step
can actually be more useful than simply levels.
The dimension idea was originally a way of perceiving the undefined
Quality, but moving it to the MoQ's levels might not be that much of
a change, since I also have a feeling the next level up is more
"intimate" with quality somehow, like Bo (Hei Bo!) and someone else
suggested.
Again we don't just want to reverse the definitions of how a higher
level looks down at a lower level, but actually think: what does this
higher level look like to a lower level?
Here are a few ideas:
* A higher level's quality perception is unfathomable to the lower level.
* Objects being used by a higher level seem to not quite behave as
statistically
usual:
- 3D people can appear any wear in a 2D world
- Atoms used to make life don't succumb to entropy as often
- Biological beings being governed by society don't seem as influenced
by survival of the fittest/evolution/ecology rules etc.
- People who are influenced by intellect don't do what the society level
expects them to do.
- People/whatever influenced by a 5th level will probably seem quite
irrational.
* Each level has a larger and larger diversification of implementations:
- A computer hardware architecture can support a lot of different
implementations of operating systems, which each can support a large number
of implementations of programs.
- The inorganic level has a single implementation throughout the universe
(except for black holes perhaps...)
- The organic level may vary in how it is implemented on different planets,
and has a huge level of different implementations on earth (species etc)
- The social level is only active in one of these species (sort of), yet has
many implementations within this (cultures)
- The intellectual level can have many implementations within a culture
(philosophical directions etc). The interesting thing here is if it is so
dependant on the underlying implementation of the social level that a
similar intellectual implementation can't accurately exist on top
of another
social implementation (culture).
- So the 5th level must be able to have many implementations within a given
intellectual implementation; Quality seems to be what makes more than one
interpretation of mathematics or other intellectual
implementation possible,
so once again quality might be more rigidly attached to the 5th level.
- I guess this isn't necessarily very bottom-up, but still useful.
* A higher level obviously doesn't just appose it's lower level it helps it:
- Well, Biology doesn't do squat for Inorganic
- Society actually also preserves life / creates more life
- Intelect creates social sciences/inventions etc that benefit society
- So level 5 also has to help preserve the intellectual level to survive.
I guess this can go on forever, however, using these 4 useful but
perhaps mostly convenient levels to describe a 5th might not be
useful since we're in the 4th one and thus they are too, they don't
"point" towards a fifth level, they're stuck inside.
How about we have a role play where we pretend we're Victorians and
try to fathom a 4th intellectual level on top of our nice 3 existing
ones, using only social etiquette and not reasoning and logic in out
discussion? :-)
It's was great to unlurk,
-tor
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:03:36 BST