From: David Harding (davidharding@optusnet.com.au)
Date: Fri Dec 03 2004 - 02:44:38 GMT
Erin wrote:
> Scott Roberts wrote:
> Unicorns are known not to exist empirically. Do you really want to
> do away
> with this distinction?
>
> DH comments:
> Actually Unicorns Are known to exist empirically. They certainly
> don't
> exist empirically objectively but i can describe to
> you(subjectively) a
> white horse with a horn out it's nose quite comfortably.
>
> ERIN: interesting question, I'm curious to where the line is
> drawn for what is accepted as empirical. Because I "experienced"
> a unicorn when I watched Blade Runner. If that is not accepted
> as an experience because it wasn't "real", then how is
> "experiencing" the Mona Lisa and other art accepted?
>
What you experienced was an inorganic artisits impresson of a Unicorn,
flashing on a television screen. Still no biological white horse with
a horn out it's nose. Through the same line of thinking, the Mona Lisa
one sees at an art gallery is an inorganic artists impression of Mona
Lisa and not the biological Mona Lisa who lived many years ago and is
now long gone.
> Actually somewhat related I was just reading this by RAW awhile
> ago, would like to put it out.
>
> *Maybe" is a thin reed to hang your life on but it's all we've got.*
> --Woody Allen
>
> This may not seem startling to gamers, but it sure woke me up; I
> learned about it on /Law and Order /last Sunday.
>
> A type of program called a"bot " can play a computer game "just
> like a human" and in the style of any chosen human, given enough
> skill on the part of the bot-maker.
>
> It seems to me this surpasses virtual reality and approaches
> electronic cloning. After all, the bot can go on playing after the
> human has "died."
>
> A bot can also exist which, like an art forgery, seems to have the
> style and habits of a certain human but actually emerged from the
> brain of a clever faker.
>
> This seems to me like virtual virtual reality and electronic
> immortality of a sort. If a bot plays chess like Alekhine, in what
> sense can we call Alekhine totally "dead"?
>
> More: computer tech in general as brought us to the stage where
> producing a photo of a crime or even a moving picture of it does
> not prove a damned thing anymore. "I saw it with my own eyes" has
> become a bad joke.
>
> I begin to feel that Maybe Logic will soon replace the
> Aristotelian either/or, not because of my books or Korzybski's or
> von Neumann's. but because virtual reality and artificial
> intelligence have destroyed certitude and left us with only
> degrees of probability.
>
None of this is in contradiction with the MOQ. Just because something
is probable doesn't mean that it is meaningless.
Pirsig describes this clealy in the Subject, Objects, Data and Values
paper..
"Bohr [Complementary] was saying that the particles that constitute our
material universe can only be described in terms of statistical
probability and never in terms of absolute certainty. He regarded the
development of the quantum revolution as in a certain sense "complete."
Quantum theory need no longer await some enlightening revelation that
would put everything right from a classical point of view.
Einstein wasn't having any of it. Quantum theory was not complete, he
said. The universe is not ultimately a set of statistics. It was at one
of these meetings that Einstein asked his famous question, "Do you
really believe God resorts to dice playing?" "
and later on...
"..[A] similarity [between Complementary and the MOQ] is that the
Metaphysics of Quality substitutes the word "value" for cause. It says
that to say "A causes B" can be better said as "B values precondition
A." This has seemed to me to be a better terminology for describing
quantum phenomena. The term "cause" implies an absolute certainty that
quantum theory says does not exist."
If your interested, there is more about probability in the same paper at
http://www.moq.org/forum/Pirsig/emmpaper.html
> BTW, do you feel absolutely sure "Robert Anton Wilson" wrote this
> and not some gol-danged bot?
>
No, but I don't need to. I'm quite happy to Value the fact that he did
write it until given a better explanation.
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