From: Valuemetaphysics@aol.com
Date: Tue Mar 23 2004 - 20:33:16 GMT
Hi Mark.
Thanks for your reply
> My use of the term severe was intuition, and i liked it because it reminded
> me of laser light - and laser light was used as an analogy in ZMM for the
> extreme rational ability of Phaedrus.
>
Well a lot of linguistic aesthetics is down to usage and the associations
that we would make with a word in an unfamiliar circumstance, and also simple
euphony (don't get me started on the use of 'farther' for 'further'! :-) ). But
the circumstances I would generally associate 'severe' with are:
- severe drought (a bad one)
- severe weather (extreme - hurricanes and so forth)
- severe manner (stern, demanding, unkindly)
- severe illness (life-threatening)
I'm sure you get the drift!
Perhaps 'intense' would be a suitable substitution? We can have 'intense
drought' and 'intense manner' , but also 'intense concentration', 'intense
rapture'.
Mark 23-03-04: I think it would be better if i adopted your suggestion and
began replacing the term 'severe' with 'intense.' I love to play with words, but
this can becomes a problem?
So, from now on, intense coherence.
The important thing is for people to understand what intense coherence in the
event stream means? It means an exceptional relationship between SQ patterns.
Mark:
> I also have no problems with Chaos or Complexity theory. However, i do not
> pretend to have a thorough understanding, and i do not wish to adopt a trendy
> mantle! But i feel these areas of scientific enquiry introduce it closer to
> aesthetics, and that is very intriguing!
>
I wasn't being entirely serious. :-) I'm anti-borrowing language for the
sake of it. For starters, that is what junk science does. Anything that goes
around covering itself with the shawls of science to simply try to evince some
degree of intellectual respect will be shot down in the junk limiting
protocols, no matter how good the underlying idea.
However we should actually seek parallels, especially physical, natural
(non-human) ones in attempting to show quality as a universial and not simply a
goal limited to the neurochemistry of the human brain, as you were showing in
discussions with regard to coherence in different domains before I joined MD.
Mark 23-03-04: Fair point. I should stress that as a valuist,
electromagnetism - quanta of electromagnetic energy - are Inorganic patterns of value. The
Human brain is a pattern of Organic value in an evolutionary relationship with
its constituting Inorganic patterns, etc.
I note that some physicists are turning to modelling social behaviour. The
outcome should be interesting: not least it will help us puncture some precious
illusions we have about ourselves. But it should also provide fertile ground
for MoQ because it is dealing with interface of the quantifiable and
(statistically) reproducible and actual human experience.
Mark 24-03-04: Are you suggesting that mathematical modelling is the
reductive aim of science? If so, i feel we need to understand that mathematical
modelling is an Intellectual pattern of value in MoQ terms.
Perhaps certain models 'best fit' because of a coherence between Intellectual
patterns and those patterns they aim to describe? The coherence itself is
more fundamental than anything else: SQ-SQ tension.
One physical parallel that springs to mind with the resonance analogy is the
electronic engineers' Q-factor, which is defined as the "fill width width at
half maximum", that is the amount which a radio tuning circuit can be adjusted
so that the output response is at least half its maximum value. The Q-factor
is important because it also indicates how well a tuning circuit will pick out
a given frequency from all the others, i.e. the Q-factor indicates the
sharpness of resonance. Naively, one might think that the best circuits are those
with the highest Q-factor. Certainly these will respond best to a single
frequency. However any information bearing signal frequency will in fact be a
combinination of frequencies which requires some width to the resonance
(bandwidth). The whole thing is a compromise between maximizing the information you can
stuff down the channel and ensuring that the signal is sufficiently distinct
from other signals and background noise. In this case the ambivalent aspect
of diversity is apparent. No diversity means that that the information is
pretty much limited to signal on or off. Too much diversity, and the signal is
broadened beyond the point of utility. Of coarse we can up the information
carrying capacity of the signal by changing to a different channel wich supports
a higher bandwidth (more information you can squeeze down the line per unit
time). But then a multinational media organisation outbids everyone and fills
it with mindless music which takes up most of the newfound information
carrying capacity (junk diversity #1) or it becomes the conduit for virus-spread spam
mail (junk diversity #2) .
I'm not quite sure where this analogy leads. Maybe it's to dicuss the
precision of the sweet spot with regard to quality. The sweetness the spot would
perhaps correpsond to a very high Q-factor. This is appropriate to an acute
adaption/degree of coherence where the need to deal with a large amount of
diverse information is small. It's cutting down the the things you need to deal
with to a minimum so that you can devote yourself to cohering with the relevant
incoming quality. It's appropriate in sport, in music, in art, in religion,
... in intellectual analysis in fact. In fact we could be said to engage in
these activities precisely because of the high Q-factor (pun intended).
However for dealing with a wide degree of incident qualities we have to drop down
from this fine resonance. We have to be alert to a lot more, but in doing so
we lose the fine response. When we need the fine response, we concentrate,
remove distractions. However in dealing with the real world as opposed to the
ideal world, the profane rather than the sacred we have to loose the fine
tuning.
But it would be a mistake to say that we needed to adapt our tuning so that
we always act on high Q-factor. This is because we could only operate in
specialised circumstances if we did. The ability to diversify is pragmatic and
requires that a low Q-filter exists so that we can react to a lot of different
information. What we need is to recognise the necessity of switching between
low Q-filter and high Q-filter. In fact certain analogies become plain: the
operation of secular society versus the operation of a religious community.
The civil observance of law in wider society versus discipline appropriate to
the military.
I might seem that diversity is contrary to what has been said with regard to
coherence before, in that in the resonance case we need to broaden the
response to cope with diversity (lower Q-factor). It's just that high-Q-factor
situations are necessarily specialised and cannot cope with all possible
circumstances. Too low a Q-factor, however, and one is not capable of responding at
all. I guess the ability to diversify is the quality of 'health'.
Resonance also feeds back into biodiversity again. In nature there is a lot
of linking of annual, tidal, daily and biological cycles, and their ability
to survive climatic change is under much study.
I sense tangential digression on my part, so I'll leave it for the mo'
All the best.
Jim.
Mark 24-03-04: There is allot of material here that requires placement within
the MoQ context? This isn't a criticism. Much of the above regards a
conceptual modelling of Inorganic patterns. I wonder to what extent aesthetic
pre-existing harmony influences these models, and if this harmony prior to structure
should be explicable in MoQ terms?
All the best,
Mark
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