Comment by thrav | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thrav | Hacker News Reader

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I’ve been drinking tonight, so I apologize if I fail, but I’m going to do my best.

Is quality purely subjective? Everyone has their own version? No. There are levels of quality that we can all agree on, even if we don’t always understand why. Art. Writing. Photography. You know quality when you see it, but it defies a true definition. First instinct says it’s subjective, but universally pleasing forms and displays say otherwise.

They suggest there is such a thing as objective beauty (quality). Faces that are perfectly symmetrical are objectively more appealing. They are quality. They invoke a feeling of being drawn in. Accepting. Gravity.

Conversely, there are things that are objectively off-putting. Everyone hates them. They (almost) universally disgust us. Push us away. Anti-gravity.

Plenty of people will argue I’m wrong and anything Landing in either category is still subjective. There are people who enjoy having human feces in their mouth. Seems like that might be right.

Pirsig’s point is that the quality judgement, the thing that makes it possible for a thing to like or dislike (going all the way to electrons, neutrons, and protons “liking” and ”disliking” each other) another thing it’s engaged with is what makes it possible for the thing to begin to define subjects and objects, period.

What differentiates a subject from an object, if not some deep notion of “I like this, give me more of this” and “this hurts me, get it away”. That’s what he calls quality, and what he posits is at the basis of all that matters.

—-alright. I’ve had 3 Pliny’s tonight and I tried. If this is all nonsense, I’m eager to hear why so I can learn a thing or two and know more than I do now—-

Firstly, well done because (if others accept your take) you've just explained the crux of ZAMM to me better than the book did. I never got that last line of yours from the book. Have another beer :)

I still don't think it's right, though. Firstly we have a problem with defining subjective/objective. For example a decent hammer is a high quality tool for hammering in nails, but a low quality tool for screwing in screws. Does that make the quality of a hammer subjective (depending on the context in which it is used) or objective (independent of human perception provided we can accept an objective goal of joining two pieces of wood) or subjective again (because it takes a human to decide on that goal)? I find it near meaningless to begin this debate without agreeing on terms.

Second, going all the way down to electrons, protons etc - this liking and disliking seems to be confusing different types of process altogether: computing/selecting from possible alternatives vs simple electromagnetism. That's not to deny that our brains might be powered by simple electromagnetism under the hood. But if you define "liking" for an electron as "moving towards a positive charge (momentum and other forces/quantum effects permitting)" and "disliking" as "moving towards a negative charge (similarly qualified)" then the electron will never experience the sensation of "dislike", while we as humans often do, so the parallel seems inappropriate.

As to whether quality is objective/subjective what's wrong with the explanation that individual tastes vary but there is usually some correlation between them due to the evolutionary forces that shape both us and our memes?

As to whether like/dislike defines subject/object what do you make of the person who dislikes their own body and would rather inhabit a different one?

As to whether quality is essential for definition of subject/object: I'm not convinced it is at all. Sure "quality" might break a crude model of subjectivity/objectivity (which can then be refined as above) but just because something broke our model doesn't make that thing essential to defining the model. I can break some form of logic (propositional? first order? I forget) by asking you to evaluate the truth of "this statement is false" but that didn't mean we needed that statement to define the logic in the first place.

And as to whether quality is undefinable: just because we repeatedly fail to define it doesn't mean it can't be.

Not wanting to be argumentative btw. I'm genuinely interested to get to the bottom of this if you have further thoughts.

No offense taken at all. You may not have gotten it, because it probably isn’t explained fully (or even realized fully by him) until his second book, which I like much more. Whereas ZMM is an inquiry into values, Lila is an inquiry into morals, and is where he lays out his metaphysics of quality. Plenty of people think it’s garbage, but I’ve yet to see someone take it apart, which is why I asked the original question of you.

You used the phrase, evolutionary forces in your explanation. To him, that’s quality.

The force that compelled the amoeba to move towards nutrients and away from danger is quality.

In Lila, written for something like 15 years after ZMM was published, he posits that quality can be broken into 2 essential forms: Dynamic quality and static quality. They basically correlate to liberalism and conservatism. In his mind, both are essential for evolutionary progress and are the source of all that is.

Dynamic quality is often random, unconventional, and disruptive. It’s some wild mutation that ends up being a positive, or some rogue actor who ends up birthing a movement for good. It is essential to progress beyond what is currently.

Static quality is all that is good currently. It’s the breadth of learned knowledge. It’s the safety of what’s gotten us this far. Abandoning it entirely is a recipe for chaos and potentially great loss.

In his estimation, the combination of these 2 forms of quality is what makes evolution work, and he believes humans are not the highest expression of evolution.

He outlines levels of the world that are conquered in the name of progress and that each one supersedes the one before it.

The first level is non-living matter. It’s just there, not doing much. The second is biological. It bends the non-living stuff to its will.

The next level is social. It uses the living stuff for its benefit. The good of the whole outweighs the good of the individuals. People are to the society like food is to people. They power it, create it, become it, and it carries on after they’re gone.

He uses the example of New York, consuming human productivity for its own benefit. Feasting on humans to grow bigger and stronger, and shitting them out the other side.

The final level, as he sees it, is intellectual. Ideas supersede the societies. They bend them to their will. The idea that slaves should be free is strong enough to risk destruction of the society.

His ethics is based on these levels. At the biological level, sex is always quality. At the societal level, the wrong sex can threaten the community / society and becomes more nuanced, only quality sometimes. Society > biology. At the intellectual level, slavery is bad, even though it results in strong communities and cities and has many benefits.

My plane is taking off, so I finished that off poorly, but read Lila is that’s at all intriguing. It’s my favorite book.

(Aside: taking the split between static/dynamic as fundamental is at least as old as Hinduism and I do kinda like that perspective).

Ok, so what stands out to me is at each of those levels you can define an individual of sorts (proton, phenotype, society, meme) with goals (electromagnetic, genetic survival, ??, memetic survival). So I get what you mean that definition of goals (quality) goes hand in hand with definition of individual and therefore subject/object in this restricted model of reality.

But that's what this model seems to be to me, more of an ELI5 explanation than the grown up one. "the proton wants to move towards the electron, the rabbit wants to have babies, etc" is a simplified model that leverages our brain's skill at modelling motivations of other animals but falls prey to our tendency to see such motivation where it doesn't exist. Once you start testing this model by making predictions, it doesn't work because the levels work rather differently under the hood. Try using evolutionary principles at the social level to predict the growth of New York for example, and you are going to mispredict because New York isn't going to reproduce in any meaningful sense, it will either grow or die (there's a vague parallel to group selection controversies here but not that relevant). People (like the inhabitants of New York) and ideas (like ideas on how cities should be run), conversely, can be said to evolve due to mutation and reproduction and if you predict the growth of New York based on evolutionary influences from those levels you are more likely to succeed (alternatively you could take some sort of network/complexity approach but whatever works it isn't going to be city level evolution * ).

But let's not get hung up on evolution, it's just an example of how the levels differ so much in their details that the only correct overarching definition of quality for each level would appear to be "the thing the thing is going to do anyway", a definition so general as to be useless * . From that light the good student essay was the thing Phaedrus wanted (the standard he was trying to achieve in his students) but if we want theories to make useful predictions we need to predict when this will and won't happen (e.g. because the alcohol molecule's notion of 'quality' interferes with the student's brain's efforts to reproduce Phaedrus' notion thereof) which is where the model breaks down. Or maybe this theory isn't supposed to help predict anything but is supposed to help grade essays? but "what I wanted to see" is not a useful definition of quality for the student either.

*edit: unless it's morphic resonance a la Rupert Sheldrake, a theory so general you can state it as "whatever happens becomes more likely to happen again". But while at first sight that notion is strongly related to quality as defined by Pirsig, I think that may be an illusion caused by them both being super-general abstractions. MR is subtly different and although not accepted by scientific consensus that difference at least allows it to make testable predictions.

Thank you for helping me think through this stuff more (as my edit history would show!)

He studied at a Hindu University, so that makes sense.

Yeah, there is a lot that you’re saying that’s a perfectly valid objection to my oversimplification, and maybe to his whole thing, but I’ll be the first to admit that it’s easy to take it apart the way I’ve relayed it. I put plenty of words in his mouth in my previous comment.

As mentioned, he spent 15 years writing the book because he wanted it to say it the right way.

There was a whole forum after it came out where a bunch of philosophy students would argue about his theories and what he meant and what that means and what falls into which category, and every once in a while he would pop in and say, “I see what you’re thinking, but no, that’s not what I meant at all, it’s actually this.”

I’d love to hear your thoughts on his own words though. You obviously know far more than I do about Philosophy.

Wikipedia of Metaphysics of Quality is probably a better cliff notes than me: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirsig%27s_Metaphysics_of_Qu...

You sell yourself short - I didn't see anything on the wiki page that enlightened me more than your summary did.

Maybe I should track down that forum, but I suspect the experience would be akin to more than one experience I've had chatting with philosophers (one of which I am not, though I guess I've been exposed to a bit through one channel or another) where I try to draw something useful out of the discussion only to be told this isn't what it's about. "It's brave of you to try and summarize" were the words of one colleague giving a seminar at the time! Maybe I just don't get it, or maybe it's they who don't get it, but it seems beyond me to figure out which. Maybe this is where I get a bit middle aged and intolerant and decide that further effort on that part isn't a good use of my time, and if a philosophy isn't useful for something (including the valid use of just being an aesthetically pleasing thing to consider) then I don't have a lot of time for it. In terms of aesthetics you have helped me to see some more in ZAMM than before, though.

On my first reading of ZAMM the real epiphany moment was where he described the workings of a motorcycle then said "... one thing classical types won't notice about this is that it's really, really, boring" or words to that effect. True. I identify strongly with the classical worldview but also with all the "groovy" phenomena on the other side of the divide which I think are perfectly explainable classically it's just that most people fail to do so.

If you haven't come across Sheldrake before you may enjoy The New Science of Life. I may not endorse his conclusions but can heartily recommend his exploration of ideas.

I would agree that I haven’t found Pirsig’s work to be the most life changing. It’s much more life affirming, and ‘hey, that’s what I’ve been thinking, but not quite putting my finger on!’

The same could be said for my recent dive into David Foster Wallace. Absolutely loving reading his writing, but more affirmation of my own thoughts than expansion. I also realize this is probably because I’m reading both decades after publication, which means time has caught up to their ahead of the curve ideas.

The most I’ve gotten out of a book, in terms of altering the way I think about the world and life, is Simone De Beauvoir and the Ethics of Ambiguity. Man, I love me some Simone.

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