From: Elizaphanian (elizaphanian@tiscali.co.uk)
Date: Mon Apr 28 2003 - 16:46:30 BST
Hi Johnny,
: >How do you understand serendipity, in MoQ terms?
:
: You mean, if something is unexpected or not desired, how can it happen, if
: DQ changes are all a direct result of our static desires and expectations?
That is precisely the question.
: I see unexpected things happening, first of all, not very often (99.9999% of
: our experience we expect), and secondly, as a result of static pattern
: causes we simply weren't aware of at the time, or that we misjudged the
: interactions of. I may not expect to get a phone call from Britney Spears
: tonight, but she could pick up her phone and call my number, and if she does
: that, then she would expect my phone to ring and me to answer. It may seem
: like serendipity to me, but to her it was completely expected, and if my
: phone didn't ring when she called it would be strange to her. So one
: person's serendipity is another persons logical necessity. Even if no other
: person were involved, logical necessity is involved. I expect that if
: someone were to investigate (which someone could always do), a cause would
: be found for everything, we wouldn't find a discontinuity between
: serendipity happening in one place and inexplicable mundane normalcy
: everywhere else, we'd find the trail that the serindipity came to us on.
I think you've run together a few ideas here that need to be separated. You say that "99.9999% of
our experience we expect", yet you then go on to confuse the sense of 'we' with your Britney Spears
example. You're also confusing (IMHO) expectation and causation. However, the most interesting
question is the one about determinism, which you seem to be buying into. Are you saying that the MoQ
is actually determinist, properly understood? Or are you saying that you disagree with the MoQ on
this point. To my mind, any acceptance of DQ rules out determinism, but perhaps I've misunderstood
your view.
: Though I see each of our conciousnesses creating the world based on the
: static patterns that we perceive, one of the fundamental expectations we
: have is that all of us live in a coherent and continuous world, under the
: same laws. So though I might not expect or understand everything that
: happens, I fully expect there to be a logical explanation for everything,
: discovered sometime in the future.
That sounds like you're articulating a guiding assumption of modernity. The question is whether that
assumption is worthwhile or not, or whether it sometimes breaks down.
Cheers
Sam
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
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