From [Marc Abrams (2004.12.24.0026)]
I’m going to try and lay out what my intentions are and I want to see if there is anyone on this list who currently feels this might be of some value.
I hope Bill Powers does, and I hope he thinks about what I am about to say.
Just as I have recently understood why you have felt slighted by my opinions about your hierarchy. I have also recently begun to understand the ‘differences’ between what you want and what I want.
Bill, we want different things, and we want the same thing. This is the reason for the love-hate relationship I have with you.
You and I both understand the importance of control and the significance this holds for science in general. Where we differ is on what level of abstraction control would be more easily ‘sold’. You see Bill, ultimately we both would like to see everything, and everyone, from the nuclear to the universe and all levels of abstraction in between involved in understanding how control affects their particular domains of interest.
Science moves very slowly. You have chosen to take a bottom up approach.
I don’t know if this will ever pan out. What I do know, is that the current hierarchy is insufficient to explain the ‘behavior’ I am interested in studying.
I am not saying the hierarchy is definitively wrong. I’m saying it is not useful in helping me explain the phenomena I am interested in explaining
I believe it is all perceptions and I believe control plays a huge role in what I am interested in. I just don’t think the hierarchy is practical at my level of interest and I believe control has a different organizational structure at my level of interest.
At your level of interest, imagination, emotions, and consciousness play a small role. At my level of interest those things play a dominant role, and just as important, the people who I want to talk to, and about, control are interested in the same things I am.
I am working on a top-down approach that I think is viable. I can’t account for how all this happens at the ‘middle’ levels, but then again, neither can you, so maybe one day we can meet in the middle and have a golden spike ceremony.
Please give it some thought.
Marc