Re: virus: Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.

Eric Boyd (6ceb3@qlink.queensu.ca)
Sat, 13 Mar 1999 15:25:57 -0500

Hi,

From: Tim Rhodes <proftim@speakeasy.org> <<
I bet a lot of ostriches had to die of heat exhaustion before that adaptation was selected for. Can you afford to be as patient and detached with yourself as Nature is with evolution?
>>

Probably not. Fortunatly, as we well know, memetic evolution occurs orders of magnitude faster. (and with less pain to boot!)

<<
Or to move it out of its rut, that single powerful strange attractor. Imagine the first example, but with the ball magnitized and the sphere of polished iron. How much more dynamic is that system, compaired to your bowl?
>>

Well, in a literal sense, no more. The ball will fall into the same type of equilibrium at the bottom of the sphere as the ball in the bowl possesses. In fact, since your ball is trapped on the sphere, while mine may escape the bowl, perhaps it is less dynamic.

However, since your real point (I'm assuming) is that stability is less important than versatility, I'll address that. Do you think it's possible to have a ball in "free fall" continually? Didn't Kuhn (I think that was the author of _The Structure of Scientific Revolution_) prove that even science uses bowls? The real trick is to remember that the bowls one does use do not have infinitly high walls -- that sufficient proof could always come along to bump the ball out. (PCR).

></methaphoric mode>

Perhaps we should coin a new mode -- mythaphoric mode. Oh, wait; that's not new!

ERiC