From: johnny moral (johnnymoral@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri Jun 04 2004 - 21:26:31 BST
Leland wrote:
>The value of the table can increase after the axe falls if you're caught in
>a blizzard with no source of heat other than fire, and you've run out of
>firewood. All of a sudden, the table stops being valuable as "something to
>set your stuff on" and becomes valuable as a way to keep from freezing to
>death.
Right, if we expect it to burn and keep us warm.
>We keep talking about the "patterns of the table" when we should be talking
>about the "patterns of value that the table embodies".
I don't see a difference. All patterns are patterns of value, the value
being that patterns can be expected to continue. If there is no expectation
of a pattern continuing, there is no more pattern and no value.
>Time, as such, is nothing but a valuable convention (like mathematics).
>Time is a model we humans build to wrap our heads around the concept of
>causality.
Well, being takes time, that's what the "ing" does, it implies a pattern
continuing into the future from the past. If anything is, it is in time.
>Value doesn't necessarily come from the repetition of static patterns over
>time. If so, we'd still be swinging from trees (or swimming in the
>primordial soup).
Nah, there's too many patterns, patterns are constantly being created by
their interaction with other patterns. As consciousness becomes conscious
of more and more patterns its consciousness grows and value increases as the
patterns are repeated. When two patterns conflict, the more valuable, more
expected one repeats and thwarts the weaker pattern so that something
unexpected happens, the weaker pattern is not realized and something else is
realized (not randomly, but according to so many other patterns). If that
happens often enough, it becomes the new expected pattern, and it stops
being moral to swing from trees and becomes moral to walk on the ground.
>For better or worse, and I can't fully understand or explain it, static
>patterns DO evolve in response to Dynamic Quality. This malleability allows
>the slow climb from the Big Bang to planetary systems; from the primordial
>soup to the guy making soup in his microwave.
How else was it going to evolve?
>>Yes, patterns emerge from the wake of the cutting edge, but they are
>>generally the same patterns that were there before. 99.99999% of the
>>time, things stay pretty much as they were from moment to moment. The
>>table emerged from the wake of the cutting edge just like it was, albeit a
>>little older, with a few fewre carbon 14 atoms or whatever. And if you
>>had taken a hatchet to it, then the pattern of hatchets destroying tables
>>is stronger than the pattern of the table staying as it was.
>
>By your own description, 99.99999% of the time they are NOT exactly the
>same from moment to moment.
No, they pretty much are. I'm talking instantaneous moment, from now to
now. Things are pretty much the same, huh? And the changes that did happen
changed according to expected patterns.
>Reality is not some static entity that changes grudgingly, it is a dynamic
>flow where static patterns need to hold on for dear life.
Reality is always changing, and bears no grudge, but patterns DO change
grudgingly. The value of patterns is in their not changing, in their being
patterns. If they had no preference for continuing themselves, then the
universe would become an unordered chaotic mess with no life in it, no
consciousness. Patterns are a conscious moral desire to repeat, that's why
they repeat and things are stable and ordered and predictable.
>Reread Lila, the part about the "Static Latch" theory. Dynamic Quality is
>ALWAYS at work, through all four levels simultaneously. Existing static
>patterns evolve in response to the force of DQ, but if they cannot maintain
>their evolved state by latching onto a new static pattern, then they
>degenerate at least as far as they've evolved (if not further, if the
>previous static latch cannot maintain it any further).
That's fine as a way to describe how patterns change. I would say that
patterns are regularly being thwarted by other patterns, and if those other
patterns are strong and regular enough, then the original pattern stops, as
it is no longer the expectation, and a new expectation takes its place.
Thus things can evolve or devolve, and which word we use is up to us.
>Our concept of time (to get back to the topic) is a fiction, but an
>extremely advantageous one to date, if you'll pardon the expression.
I think actually that time is one of the most basic primary attributes,
central to existence and consciousness. Not a fiction at all, unless you
consider existence and consciousness also to be fictions.
Johnny
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