Fellow MOQers..
There has been some controversy recently on the splitting of Quality into
Dynamic and Static quality. At no time have I ever thought that this
division
is anything more than a convenient perception of Quality.
The inter-relatedness of everything means that no pattern can be truly
static, because it is always changing. Sometimes the changes are happening
at
an imperceptible rate, such as in the erosion of a mountain; but the change
is
always there.
Similarly, there can be no Dynamic Quality without static patterns; for each
Quality Event occurs out of a static pattern.
What we have here is two words trying to encompass a myriad of shades
between
100% static and 100% dynamic. We’re trying to make an illusory Boolean
either/or
on/off Dynamic/Static division – and doing a pretty good job of fooling
ourselves! Although erroneous, this distinction is very often useful when
attempting to get to grips with MoQ. You just need to consider Einstinian
vs.
Newtonian physics – we still use Newton’s equations until the precision
required
forces us to use the more correct model.
A similar change of perception was forced upon quantum physicists when they
realized that they had to work with probabilities instead of certainties.
This
was extremely unsettling for them, I’m sure, but in the end the model they
produced matched the world more closely than the other candidate models.
Still,
we don’t consider Schroedinger or Bohr when we’re stirring our tea!
Using the insights gained, Static quality could be redefined as ‘a pattern
of
Quality events which are similar to a previous pattern within a complex
system’;
and Dynamic Quality, then, becomes ‘a pattern of Quality events which
substan-
tially differ from any previous pattern within a complex system’.
But, then, what is similar? And what is different? Is it a value judgment of
the
observer? Obviously, there are varying degrees of similarity, ‘identical’
being
the closest [un-attainable?] state; Difference, too, is hard to nail down.
Trying to quantify similarity or difference in this context appears to be a
futile chore.
Perhaps we should examine, instead, what constitutes high Quality and low
Quality. There has been much talk of evolution on this list – IMHO,
evolution is
the poor man’s version of MoQ. I perceive hQ for an entity (rock, bird,
human,
theory, corporation, etc.) to be the set of Quality events which optimise
the
balance between DQ and sQ, resulting in evolution and prolonged presence. We
have heard before that hQ can only be distinguished from lQ in hindsight –
by
the survival/adaptation or death of the entity, as compared with rivals.
However, the entity itself always attempts to choose the path that it
perceives
is of highest Quality. There are no exceptions to this statement.
I’m off to fix my bike now. Comments on the above?
Keep it real,
Curtis.
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