On Saturday, May 17, 2003, at 06:40 PM, Roy M.Silvernail wrote:
On Saturday 17 May 2003 11:47 am, Tim May wrote:
The general theme is purpose "the purpose of life." The purpose of any lifeform, or at least the outcome after competition and selection, is furtherance of life. Whether genotype or phenotype, whether actual instance of a lifeform or the DNA.
The purpose of a U.S. politician is to be reelected. Nothing else matters. So the politician will say anything he has to say to be reelected. And he will spend money that is not his own to be reelected.
I'm sure Tim has read this, but maybe some people havent.
http://generalsystemantics.com/Systemantics.htm
The Postal Service is alive, too. All systems are.
I read Korzybski ("general semantics--the map is not the territory") around 1970. General systems theory, a la Bertanlanffy, I only read enough of to say "So?" General semantics and general systems theory are not very profound. Much more interesting to me today is epistemic logic in particular, and modal logic in general, and topos theory even more abstractly. However, these areas are a bit too abstract for most of the popularizations. (Such as they are today, where people don't read. I thought things were pretty bad when "Analog" and "Scientific American" were the sources, now I find that SciAm is a thin, glossy, no content advertisement rag and "Analog" is virtually unread. But Eminem be saying "Keep da faith, baby!") --Tim May "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." --Robert A. Heinlein