[ExI] robert pirsig's and contingency in evolution

spike spike66 at att.net
Sun Nov 11 20:55:43 UTC 2007


> I would love to make that trip, but only with a very small group, or
> the spirit would be entirely lost.
> 
> - Jef


I have a notion which will tie together the two currently most active
threads, evolution and ZMM, along with an entertaining story.

In some ways, memes in a human brain are analogous to evolving lifeforms.
Memes compete, they reproduce, they change over time.  The analogy kinda
works if it isn't pushed too hard.  Seemingly random events can occur which
radically change the memeset environment in a brain.  An accident, meeting a
certain person, reading a certain book for instance, is analogous to an
ecosystem in equilibrium, suddenly punctuated by a period of massive change;
sometimes brought on by an extraordinary event such as a meteor impact,
sometimes it just happens for mysterious reasons.

Think of the books that you have read that had the most significant or
biggest impact on your memeset, and divide them by the decade in which they
were written (not necessarily the decade in which you read the book).  For
me it would be

50s:  Kerouac's On The Road
60s:  Persig's Zen
70s:  Hafstadter's Godel Escher Bach (a lot of us will pick that one)
80s:  Engines of Creation by the K.Eric, or Surely You're Joking by Feynman
90s:  The Spike by Damien
00s:  the decade isn't over.  Greenspan's Age of Turbulence is a contenduh

Nowthen, think of how you actually stumbled upon the book.  Was it the
result of a logical predictable course of events?  Or did it just happen in
some unpredictable way?

Looking at my above list, I came upon Engines of Creation while browsing
thru the science section at Borders.  I thought it was a book about
creationism, perhaps misfiled in the science section when it should be in
the religion section.  Turns out I looked it over, realized it was in the
right place, but my mind wasn't.  Read that book blew my mind back onto
course.  Finding it was a complete accident.

Now here's the fun story.  When I was in college in 1982, I was riding an
old junkyard dog, a 1964 model BSA thunderbolt that needed a lot of TLC,
assuming that TLC cost approximately nothing.  I went to the college library
hoping to find some source material.  In their very few books about
motorcycle maintenance, someone had misfiled Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance.  Zen?  Who is Zen?  Never heard of him.  Never heard of Pirsig,
never heard mention of the book.  I picked it up, saw the black and white
photo of Pirsig on his 64 CB77 superhawk on the inside jacket, an image that
is still burned into my retinas.  Cool, thought I, my buddy used to have one
of those.

As I began to read, I immediately saw it wasn't really about motorcycles,
and the author clearly knew little about bikes.  He went on an on about his
old bike needing this and that.  Well, his "old" bike was only four years
old, way newer than anything I had ever owned.  My most nearly roadworthy
bike was a creaky 18 years old by then.  Everything Mr. Zen said regarding
motorcycles was silly or inaccurate in some way, but the philosophy rang
true, blew my mind wide open.  It was far cheaper and legaller than LDS.

That book caused me to develop from the hopelessly L7 stuck-in-squaresville
retro geekmeister to the man I am today, a totally grokful with-it groovy
mod hipster geekmeister.  All this because someone punctuated my memetic
equilibrium by misfiling a book. 

spike










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