Lars Marius Garshol (larsga@ifi.uio.no)
Thu, 8 Jan 1998 06:32:20 +0100
* Magnus Berg
ö
ö Hi Lars
Hello! :)
ö It wasn't intended as a dismissal really, but I guess it could be
ö interpeted that way depending on your view of AI.
I did interpret it that way, I must admit. It was especially this part
that struck me so:
"Ä...Å we inhibited them from being intelligent by building them so
static that it is impossible for them to exercise any dynamic choices
of their own. We have crippled them by specifying the voltage levels
for ones and zeros so wide apart that there's no chance for Dynamic
Quality to have any influence whatsoever."
I'm not sure if I disagree with the conclusion, but I'm not happy with
the form of the argument. I'll try to return to this when I've had
more time to think about it.
ö Asking TLS about definitions of subjective and objective is like
ö asking Saddam Hussein if he's a republican or a democrat ;-)
I know. :)
ö Anyway, a SOM objective thing would be the speed of light in
ö vacuum.
Very good example! However, why is it objective? How do we define
objectivity?
ö The MoQ counterpart would be Quality I guess.
I'm trying to keep that part of what I know out of it for the time
being, so that I can concentrate on understanding objectivity and
subjectivity within SOM.
ö Calling Quality objective might sound outrageous but that's the way
ö Pirsig describes it in ZMM. He says that what people have different
ö opinions about, what is subjective, is what things have Quality, not
ö Quality itself.
Nope. Having to decide whether Quality is subjective or objective is
precisely what makes him reject the SOM paradigm entirely.
ö There's also an excellent chapter in "The Mind's I" by D.
ö Hofstadter about this. It's called "What is it like to be a bat" and
ö I think it's been mentioned here before. It discusses the
ö possibility to express subjective "be-ing" objectively, and in that
ö case, what's left of the subject? The free-will?
Strange that you should mention that book. I'm reading his "Fluid
Concepts and Creative Analogies" with rising enthusiasm right now. In
fact, what he says in it reminds me very strongly of Pirsigs ideas
about Quality. So much so that I sent him an email about it last
night. :) (No, I don't know him or anything, I just happened to find
his email address on his home page. No response yet, but that's hardly
surprising as he hasn't read his email since Jan 2nd.)
I will try to get hold of that book as it sounds interesting and since
I think very highly of both FCaCA and Gödel, Escher, Bach.
ö Good luck with the bubbling and keep us posted.
Thanks, I will! I only hope I'll be able to find the time to write it
down when it comes together (if it ever does).
-- "These are, as I began, cumbersome ways / to kill a man. Simpler, direct, and much more neat / is to see that he is living somewhere in the middle / of the twentieth century, and leave him there." -- Edwin Brockhttp://www.ifi.uio.no/ülarsga/ http://birk105.studby.uio.no/
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