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Daido Roshi, who had been a biochemist in the 1950s and 60s, and I used to talk about what we called a merging of person and machine. The topic came up for us around my technique of using the monastery's riding mower which was a very simple and highly responsive design with one universal joint, a 200+ degree turn radius that easily offered the sense of dexterity of the body extended into or through the machine.

One conversation in particular explored our appreciation of incremental contributions in evolution: microevolution.

Ken's highlighting access to information growing exponentially each age (written word, printing press, television) reminded me of what Peter Norvig (director of research for Google Inc., and leading developer of AI ) refers to as qualitative shifts [in access], the printing press, the public library, and the world wide web.

Historically, it seems to me, so much of the innovation, development and preservation/standardization of data/language were accomplished by variations on the priest-poet-scribe role, those lucky few who got to sit out the toiling in the fields, the wars, and got to work the cognitive edge. As toilers in the subtle fields they may have aslo had greater opportunity for state stablization.

With each qualitative shift in access I'm seeing a differentiation process. Quadrants seem to grow increasingly distinct (at the individual level) since the begining of the division of labor on through the general trend of 'universalizing' access to information. 

One fear, from my view now, is that the True would outstrip the Good by too far. That the long divorce of state/stage dependent access from access/application in general could drive LL and LR developments further apart, more out of sync, more vulnerable to 'hijacking'.

Suddenly I get the urge to go read some Hans Jonas.

Kerry

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'takes all kinds.

but will it really be physically possible to download all human knowledge into human brains ?

there is so little we really know about the brain as it is .. how can we download into it ?

how ? how ? how ?

and if it does really happen .. can u imagine what our conversations will be like ?

 

Kerry:

Thanks for stating a key issue - the possibility of the True overriding the Good and the Beautiful.

Everytime I see a building that is not beautiful, I think of what must have been the discussion between the architect and the commissioner of the building. LR, UR, LR, etc. What is beautiful and what is good could not be justified using exterior eyes. And exterior eyes allow us to "point out" justifying qualities (cost, durability, immunity from law suits or criticism, etc.)

This is a key challenge to our era - to point out the distinct perspectives/domains and ensure that validation proper to that domain is applied in a balanced way through the quadrants. Beauty need not be justified based on cost considerations. Goodness need not be aesthetically pleasing. Truth may be ugly and .... unfair. But they are all co-valid modes that must be balanced.

To apply both beauty and goodness at the same time that the true is applied, we have to know it individually through practice. I don't see the Europeans having much of a problem doing this. What I do see is that the Europeans are disgusted at us for our infantile and ignorant failure to apply this beautiful and good truth!

You have heard me say this before - the most pressing issue in America is not war, or the economy, or gas. It is our aesthetic and moral bankruptcy at the same time that we know more and more truth.