> Jason wrote:
>
> >Richard Brodie wrote:
> >> You would be collapsing an important distinction. The Level-2 mind sees
> >> his world view converging on Absolute Truth which ever more accurately
> >> maps Objective Reality. The Level-3 mind sees her memetic programming as
> >> a collection of different, possibly conflicting ways to map Objective
> >> Reality (if she chooses to use that distinction-meme).
> >
> >Does one have to exclude the other? Can a person collect
> >information in an effort to accurately map OR while at the same
> >time view hir memetic programming as something to be controlled
> >and altered to suit hir purposes?
>
> The problem is that there's not just one map. Unless you're willing to
> let go of your most cherished beliefs you will be stuck, to some degree
> anyway, with the map that came with the car.
One point of the "multiple maps" is that it lets one accurately map MORE
"memetic territory". The transition areas should be clearly marked.
[I seem to use four major ones to keep everything straight, right now.]
For instance, when mapping the Earth using plane maps [I'm thinking
geography/topography, not more subtle things like nations]:
Various projections are used to detail different aspects of the Earth.
They all involve some kind of distortion. For instance, Mercator
projection is easy to find latitude/longitude on, but the shortest paths
are anything BUT straight lines. Also, the poles get converted from a
point to a line. There's a projection that will make shortest
paths/great circles look like straight lines on relatively large scales. A
third type [automatically done by looking at globes] shows perspective
relationships from the viewpoint of orbit/space travel.
If one wants to use a Mercator-like map with acceptable tolerance [the
distort effects on shortest paths don't show up, like a good atlas on
small scales], one needs several flat maps to cover Africa or Asia.
A single "memetic map", by analogy, would have one of two problems:
1) the domain cuts off. [One can only see half of a globe at once.]
2) Singular garbage appears. [Points suddenly look like lines.]
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/ Towards the conversion of data into information....
/
/ Kenneth Boyd
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