From: Jim Ledbury (jim.ledbury@dsl.pipex.com)
Date: Mon Mar 22 2004 - 14:04:33 GMT
Hi Mark, others
Mark:
> Hi Jim,
> Your post is extremely interesting. (For me at any rate!)
> There are a couple of points i wish to clear if i may?
> The first is the Quality = Diversity point: I do not feel Quality =
> Diversity.
Jim Ledbury, Mon 22.Mar.2004:
Er, prossibly a bit of sloppy language on my part is causing unnecessary
confusion here. What I really meant was about using (quantifiable)
diversity as an indicator for quality. I was not trying to say diversity
is identifiable with quality (we know that it isn't!) just that I had
doubts that the degree of diversity was always identical to the degree
of quality (to the extent that quality can be quantified).
I meant I don't believe that a simple quantifiable (diversity) can
necessarily be taken to be indicative of more quality, although it might
be indicative of it. Certainly where there is a greater _capacity_ for
diversity, this is _probably_ indicative of greater quality in the
ability to utilise resources (but not necessarily - I think various
caveats can be made about the sustainability of the resources here: a
short term unsustainable increase in productivity is not quality in the
long run). Similarly where there is an actual greater diversity
(subject to it not exceeding optimal), again this is _probably_
indicative of the health (greater quality) of the relevant level but
again, not necessarily (junk diversity). Actually this is where the my
whole digression started: it seemed to me that diversity in the
biosphere was automatically taken to mean an indicator of quality, and I
went on from there with generalisations about optimal diversity.
Mark:
> Rather, i regard Diversity as optimum balance between DQ and SQ as
> best, or Quality. An important distinction.
>
> So, optimum diversity is part of the term Coherence, which is a
> relationship between DQ as motivator and DQ as the goal of evolution.
Jim Ledbury, Mon 22.Mar.2004:
I think we're probably in agreement on diversity. It's just that
without the use of the word 'optimal' it seems to me to perhaps mean
that "more diversity entails more quality" which I don't believe to be
the case.
Mark:
> The next point is, by analogy, a 'fractal' one if you like?
> Coherence comes and goes - waxes and wanes on fractal - like levels of
> scale: We may be discussing one species, we may be talking about a
> life time, we may be talking about the whole biosphere?
> What ever the patterns of value involved, there is a sweet spot or
> coherence emerging.
Jim Ledbury, Mon 22.Mar.2004:
Well certainly, the idea of 'optimal' diversity is largely dependent on
some idea of static environment, that is other things being the same,
all will tend to a steady state. Actually from studies into feedback
(yes, 'chaos' theory - I don't have problems with chaos theory btw, I
just have problems with the trendiness of it!) we know that this is not
the case. If the feedback with the environment is strong we will get
increasingly complex oscillations in the level of diversity
(overcompsenation). In fact this inability to approach an optimum could
be said to be low quality.
However beyond all this, we have the fact that the environment is not
static and is continually fluctuating so there is in fact no static
optimum 'level' as my language suggested. I did infact mean 'optimal
state' which is not necessarily static, although the implication and
association in philology might be. The only way to improve will infact
to the system to become attuned to the fluctuations of the environment -
yes, cohere as you say.
Mark:
> Mark: I feel there is an important point to be made concerning
> coherence here.
> It may be argued that in order to lead a satisfying life one has to be
> open to ever more diverse and Dynamic experiences? Along the way, the
> drive for more diversity and Dynamic experience may lead to varying
> degrees of either stasis or chaos?
> The way avoids extremes and welcomes coherence - that state in which
> SQ and DQ dance about each other so deftly; so fine is the interplay
> that stasis and Dynamism forge an exceptional state.
> The question may be asked, 'Does any form of progress disrupt coherence?'
> I would answer that progress aims to make more severe coherence. So,
> in a sense, coherence changes but remains the same? If one, by
> analogy, contemplates this in terms of fractal scale, one may taste
> the flavour of what i have in mind?
>
> Most of us do not have the opportunity to be so happy?
Jim Ledbury, Mon 22.Mar.2004:
Yes: too dynamic would correspond to overdiversification or
overcompensation in hunting for an optimum or greatest degree of
coherence. Too static would correspond to not diversifying enough,
being too sluggish in finding the (? an?) optimum or the greatest degree
of coherence. Optimum. Sweet Spot. Goldilocks principle.
Platt:
> That's why your use of 'coherence' seems odd and hardly descriptive of
> the evolutionary process, a process that took place long before
> thought was created by the human brain. What this has to do with
> 'thought' escapes me.
>
> And the adjective 'severe'
>
>when applied to 'coherence' makes no sense at all. What is 'severe orderly
>and consistent thought?'
>
Jim Ledbury, Mon 22.Mar.2004:
Like Platt I find the use of the term 'severe' with regard to coherence
a little strange (aesthetically), although I know what you mean. I have
no problem with "coherence" itself, as this term is used in physics to
indicate how well the frequency of oscillation of natural systems match
- which certainly existed before human thought. Instead of severity
though maybe we should use 'acuteness' or 'sharpness' ? Or even
'greatest degree of'?
In fact would could just go and borrow wholesale the
physicists'/electronic engineers' language of resonance, the flipside of
coherence, in which the fineness of the resonance is described by the
"Q-factor" : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_factor ! Although if we
were to borrow this term, it would probably create too much confusion,
not least in arguing that a very sharp resonance in fact is too finely
balanced and can only bring quality in exception circumstances or too a
very few...
ATB
Jim
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