Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance was one of the first books on philosophy that I read outside of my philosophy curriculum at university and it stayed with me.
It's a great book discussing the metaphysics of quality, but not just that. It's written in a captivating way, mixing both the 'food for thought' as well as a pleasant narative about a father and a son on a motorcycle trip.
It's one of the philosophy books that I can recommend to people who are not directly interested in philosophy as well, which gave me some quite fun discussions with my friends about the topics in the book without being too deep into the philosophy itself.
And you think you're having troubles with your startup?
"Zen was published in 1974, after being rejected by 121 publishing houses...then Pirsig lived reclusively and worked on his second book Lila for 17 years before its publication in 1991."
"Quality is, how do you know what it is, or how do you know that it even exists? If no one knows what it is, then for all practical purposes it doesn't exist at all. But for all practical purposes it really does exist."
His son Chris was murdered long after the book was published, there is nothing spoiled unless you're really into the plot of postscripts of later editions.
EDIT: (And, yeesh, it was forty years ago. What "spoiler"? BTW, Vader is Luke's father.)
Read it in the context of someone who would now be old enough to have died through a variety of causes, be it a motorcycle accident, cancer, or a heart attack. You also now have to read it in the context of (spoiler alert) the author being dead as well.
You don't, because it has no bearing on subsequent events. It might be interesting to consider that on a subsequent reading (ZAMM certainly stands up to multiple readings) but you're just as apt to mislead yourself by projecting your incomplete knowledge of his eventual end onto his behavior and utterances in the book; so you might find yourself reading it and thinking 'oh, this element in his character no doubt played into his murder' when iirc the circumstances of his death were essentially random.
My experience of the book certainly ends with my reading wave being affected by that postscript in the book. Pirsig allowed for it to be in the book itself, which means it became part of his text too.
Chris may have been murdered long after the events of the book itself, but in the reading timeline, it's mere moments after finishing the main text.
I read the book about 5 years back, it interested me so much, and I ofcourse wanted to research the father/son's present day life. Well it was heart breaking. So I get what you are saying.
His son's death wasn't a plot device, but a tragedy. It's not part of the book. It's not intended to have any meaning. Calling it a 'spoiler' is a strange mixup of categories, and somewhat insensitive.
I have upvoted your comment, regardless of the technical accuracy of your wording. In the edition of the book that I first read, Pirsig included this information in an afterword and although it wasn't a core part of the original narrative it certainly was expressed as an update or continuation. And having travelled the journey with father, son and ghost until that point, it was a heartbreaking epilogue.
It was in reply to a comment mentioning how much the author has struggled, and my comment points that he had even more to deal with, with the tragic death of his son. Why is it crass, genuinely?
I'm a huge fan of ZMM and I enjoyed Lila - where he elucidates a metaphysics of quality. His writing is brilliant, but my theory is that he may have experienced mental distress, in part, because quality is actually _subjective_, not objective. He attempts to elucidate and objectify something that fundamentally depends on a point of view / perspective.
With no other context, I assume it means that since the book is in part an attempt to reconcile "romantic" and "classical" viewpoints, commenter was able to gain a new appreciation of the Apple design philosophy after reading the book.
I second the other comment. Please take a minute to expand your thoughts! I didn't read the book, but perhaps if you take a moment to write your thoughts, you will move some people to get and read the book as well :)
your thoughts probably also stand on their own and could be interesting for people who have read the book.
There are two characters in the book. One rides a newer BMW motorcycle and only lets the technicians work on it and just wants it to work. The other has an older motorcycle that he just intuits how its operating, how it feels, what it needs. The former is afraid of technology and just sees it as a tool to get what he wants done (to get from A to B) . The latter values the feeling of the ride, the ritual of riding, the journey more than everything working out issue free etc.
Before this book I couldnt understand why Apple existed, it exerted so much control over its users, it abstracted away the intimate details etc. Apple appeals to users because so many of them are afraid of being intimate with their tools, they just want it to work.
I say i was a total robot because to me it was all about the facts. The fact was i could get a "higher spec" machine for less money and have more control over it. But I couldnt empathize with the Apple users. Now i get it.
A wonderful book that I'm amazed ever got published. Still, as noted in wikipedia: "It was originally rejected by 121 publishers, more than any other bestselling book, according to the Guinness Book of Records."
[edited to remove spoiler I shouldn't have mentioned -- my apologies]
FWIW, i read and old copy, it lacked the afterword. I found out years later when talking to someone about the book. I get your point, but it wasn't part of the original work.
Was there a US university philosophy class in the 70s and 80s that didn't include reading this book? Maybe outside the US, as well. Someone said about it that it was as much about riding and fixing motorcycles as Moby Dick was about whaling. Much like the book, I'm not sure I totally understand that but you can't deny its importance.
I've always told me friends that it's about Western philosophy and mental illness. Those two subjects are covered just as much as Zen and Motorcycle maintenance.
The parts about your relationship to the machine will definitely resonate with engineers, but that's not all it's about. I guess that is why it is a great book -- there's something for everyone and it can be read in multiple ways.
Not in my Philosphy Department (1989-1992). "That book may have brought you here, but we will focus on the original Phaedrus, followed by Descartes, Kant and Wittgenstein."
I have read ZMM many times, it is on the short list of books that have had a profound influence on me. But in college I read a different set of philosophers.
Anybody with some education in philosophy figures out that utter, logical-proof certainty can't be had. So what does one do for epistemology instead? There are two main alternatives:
-- Religious-style faith. This is not my preferred choice.
-- An aesthetically-tinged approach to epistemology.
What I mean by the latter is, for example, generalizing Occam's Razor into usability. The problem with Occam's Razor is that it says, in effect, "In case of doubt go with the simpler answer", without giving a general way to judge what's simpler. Any solution to that problem winds up being an aesthetic kind of judgment.
It's sort of what the Minimum Message Length formulation says.
It's hard to communicate the "essential meaning" of Occam's Razor in simple language, because the only good analogies for it involve things like compression algorithms, quantum physics or topology.
If you know what the word "axiom" really means, and can picture an address of a thing in a set taking up space (e.g. bytes of a URL) as your query gets more specific, then Occam's Razor is a very "obvious" statement about the probability of reification of mathematical objects in our universe given their size. If you don't have that context, someone can talk for an hour and it won't communicate the point.
> It's hard to communicate the "essential meaning" of Occam's Razor in simple language
It's really not. Here's a few that don't make the same mistake.
- Plurality must never be posited without necessity.
- Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.
- Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.
- Whenever possible, substitute constructions out of known entities for inferences to unknown entities.
- favor hypotheses that make the fewest unwarranted assumptions about the data from which they are derived.
All of these are more correct and communicate the principles better than the "simplest" formulation which is just flat-out wrong without extremely heavy clarification of what "simplest" means (at which point you may as well use one of the above).
I can't find the source of the quote now but a famous physicist once critiqued The Many Worlds interpretation along the lines of "It might be light on assumptions but it's very heavy on universes"
> Quantum many worlds violates most if not all of those everyday language formulations.
This is a common objection to which supporters would say means you're not reviewing the data in enough depth. It's a fair argument tho.
Given Occam is supposed to only be a guideline and not some kind of universal law it wouldn't actually matter if QMW did violate it though (even though that's debatable anyhow).
It was a common statement of a generally justifiable philosophical tool that happened to be commonly used by theologians like Occam (who wasn't that first to use the idea - Aristotle stated something similar).
The intertwining of philosophy and theology makes it related but I'd say your characterization was simplistic and quite incorrect overall.
The actual Occam's Razor is useless unless adapted. How does one count "assumptions" -- if we take Wikipedia's word for what it states -- or "entities" -- if we take the version I first learned?
Most versions that actually work can be lightheartedly equated to a "Principle of Least Foofarah".
Why does one need it to be aesthetically tinged? Another approach is virtue epistemology, where we count as true that which trusted sources and processes say is true. That is, the drug dog who has been right in the past is one we listen to in the future. The scientific project that makes predictions that turn out to be accurate is the one we listen to.
> That is, the drug dog who has been right in the past is one we listen to in the future
If we're in a situation where we get good data about what's right, we can just do science and it doesn't really matter what authorities or dogs think.
The place where you need non-scientific epistemologies is when you don't have good feedback data.
And sometimes even when there is data, bad predictors can mutually self reinforce. Racist cops arrest more black kids, more black kids get convicted, that proves racist cops are good predictors of criminality. It's not true, but the data says it's true.
It's equivalent to a scientist doing many studies and only publishing the ones that are positive. The stats only work for independent measures but nothing is independent especially when you are using predictions to make policy.
Scientism is good for making better predictions, but it won't tell you how to live. You could be a utilitarian and declare that you will live to the end of maximizing your utility (however you define that) but the problem with utilitarianism is that omniscience is elusive.
That means that there are certain things which aren't answerable, at least not easily or precisely. But that isn't a problem with the epistemology you adopt: some things are going to be hard or impossible to know no matter how you define knowing.
Or, "how to live" isn't an epistemological question. So demanding that an epistemology accept aesthetic standards to accommodate concerns about how to live is confused.
It's not an aesthetic judgment, though. Aesthetics has to do with beauty. Epistemology has to do with defining knowledge and knowability. The commenter I responded to says we need the one for the other, but hasn't offered any justification.
I don't remember how I came across it, but I remember reading it early in high school - 9th grade, I think - and loving it. While the philosophy was a great read, the ideas of understanding and caring for your equipment influenced my thoughts on all the technology I use, even if I'm not a mechanic.
Not a fan of the book (it calls to mind an acid trip - the author sounds like he understands something deeper, but there's no clarity to it), but the author undeniably had a thought process different than the mainstream, which is always valuable.
I totally get you on your critique, but I think the ambiguity is somewhat intentional - think koans in Zen Buddhism. Haven't read it in over 10 years now, so if I were to read it again I might not think the same, however. He probably directly mentions the koans thing himself haha.
Around the same time I read Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman [1], and Illusions by Richard Bach [2], and felt they were both better than Zen. At the end of the day I think the real value of any of those texts is the introduction to philosophy/self-discovery in general, in a really accessible form.
"A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at such a speed, it feels an impulsion... this is the place to go now.
But the sky knows the reason and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons." - Illusions
To my mind, the concept of upāya (skillful means) is essential. A particular teaching might not be literally true, but it's not necessarily false either. It might not make sense to you, but that might simply be because it's meant for someone else. There are core truths in Buddhist thought, but the route to understanding and internalising those truths is not necessarily straightforward or logical.
I also dislike Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, but I can see that many other people found value in it.
I remember -- belatedly, after a few suggestions to do so -- reading "Zen" the summer after I graduated. I rarely notate in a book, but that copy ended up full of notes in the margins.
At the time, I thought it was one of the most significant things I'd read. Of course, I was young, and it was a long time ago. (And then, life and injury and illness and... well, a distinct lack of quality happened, and I never got back to it.)
I've been meaning, intending, lately, to reread it. Last year, I was invited into a book club. I've considered suggesting it -- I think I will.
Quality. Eloquence, in a word.
P.S. I've been thinking about getting a bike and riding for a summer. Adequate, but not overdone -- and quiet.
Piece by piece, this rough idea has been sketching itself in.
Don't know why I'm telling HN, this, or why you should care. Except that we all should care about quality. And about a man who thought and felt hard on the topic and in turn gave us much to think about. Reflected much of ourselves, to ourselves -- giving us eyes and ears into ourselves and our choices.
While I enjoyed the book, for me going back over it years later, in the afterword for the second edition: a crushing blow. It now overshadows the book for me. It describes the murder and aftermath many years later of his son that was featured in the novel. Here. I found it. Read it.
This was the edition I first read. I distinctly remember after finishing it for the first time, and for some reason immediately starting the afterword, that having such a crushing affect after finishing the book, i really think it ruined my mood, and thus dampened the memory.
Chris said something which the witnesses could not hear. His assailant became angrier. Chris then said something that made him even more furious. He jammed the knife into Chris's chest.
There's "evil," and then there's turning a mugging into getting knifed in the chest. Unless you're saying that this was the norm for SF muggings in the 80's. It's pretty likely that 22 year-old guy acted smart. That doesn't make it right, all I said was that I'd be interested in what exactly he said to provoke the response.
So if you get mugged, you might as well spit in the face of the robber, right? Or tell him it's a shame he didn't apply himself in school, then quote Socrates, and laugh at his ignorance? Seeing that things are totally out of your hands, or something.
Then a letter from him arrived which said, strangely, "I never thought I would ever live to see my 23rd birthday."
His twenty-third birthday would have been in two weeks.
>>>"The book is brilliant beyond belief," wrote Morrow editor James Landis before publication. "It is probably a work of genius and will, I'll wager, attain classic status."
Amazing when things like that are foretold. (Yes I know, survivorship bias blah blah)
"Phædrus' provocation informed the Chairman that his substantive field was now philosophy, not English composition. However, he said, the division of study into substantive and methodological fields was an outgrowth of the Aristotelian dichotomy of form and substance, which nondualists had little use for, the two being identical.
He said he wasn't sure, but the thesis on Quality appeared to turn into an anti-Aristotelian thesis. If this was true he had chosen an appropriate place to present it. Great Universities proceeded in a Hegelian fashion and any school which could not accept a thesis contradicting its fundamental tenets was in a rut. This, Phædrus claimed, was the thesis the University of Chicago was waiting for.
He admitted the claim was grandiose and that value judgments were actually impossible for him to make since no person could be an impartial judge of his own cause. But if someone else were to produce a thesis which purported to be a major breakthrough between Eastern and Western philosophy, between religious mysticism and scientific positivism, he would think it of major historic importance, a thesis which would place the University miles ahead. In any event, he said, no one was really accepted in Chicago until he'd rubbed someone out. It was time Aristotle got his."
"In other words, any true German mechanic, with a half-century of mechanical finesse behind him, would have concluded that this
particular solution to this particular technical problem was perfect."
Anyone else remember that bit? I now ride a big BMW R1200RT. I wonder if this book influenced me to do that? RIP Mr Pirsig
If anything, the book would have kept me away from the clueless, snooty BMW riders that don't have a clue about their bikes. Real riders like Pirsig ride Hondas, just like I did for most of my riding career. :-)
Why would you downvote it in the first place? That's exactly how John in the book struck me. I'd even argue that it was kind of the point of the section that was quoted.
I'm sad to say I'm a clueless Honda driver myself (shadow spirit 750). But his book inspired to get the manual and start working thru it. Hopefully by the summer I'm making my first adjustments.
Pirsig's displeasure at John's disrespect for using a strip cut from an aluminum beer can as a handgrip spacer on John's lah-dee-dah BMW -- who can forget that? That vignette served as the main example of Pirsig's "quality" and how easily the rose-colored glasses of provincialism can distract us from seeing it.
If you love the book and haven't seen the other photos from the trip, check them out—it's 12 photos Pirsig took during the summer 1968 trip! Pirsig sent them to a professor who was doing ZMM-related research:
Thanks for the link, I hadn't seen but one of those pictures before.
And for those thinking a 900lb. Honda Goldwing is required for cross-country travel, Pirsig's bike was Honda Hawk 305, as in 305cc. It put out 28 horsepower. I'll bet there are scooters today that put out more power. And Pirsig loaded it with two people and camping gear and rode it cross-country.
Yeah but bear in mind the maintenance became a significant part of the experience (motorcycle maintenance is not just in the title for decoration). Some people prefer not to do that.
There are vastly more vehicles on the road today, and people expect to maintain higher average speeds. Also, maintaining speed becomes exhausting on smaller bikes, for a variety of reasons.
My introduction to Quality Without a Name and motorcycling. I still ride and still appreciate engineering that somehow manages to be greater than just the sum of its parts: the Leica M3, the Blackbird SR71, the HP 12C.
I have my main one + two verified working ebay specials within arms' reach.
(HN being one of the few places I can not only admit this, but get good-natured grief for using the 'new' models. :D)
I also have another saved up, ready to give my younger brother-in-law as he prepares for engineering classes. I plan on getting him as addicted to RPN as the rest of us.
Quality without a definition, surely. Quality Without a Name was Christopher Alexander's idea, described in A Timeless Way of Building. Though the two are related. I've read both ZatAoMM and Lila, and can recommend both.
Both Alexander and Pirsig are great and I think they have a lot of crossover. I actually just released my book this week that mashes their two ideas together. It is with sadness that I learned of his passing today and a bit ironic that the title of my book is 'Immortality'.
I've read both books and I'd be very interested in reading how they are related.
I do agree they are related, but though the use of the word "quality" in both contexts probably confuses issues rather than illuminates them.
I agree with Paul Graham when he says that most philosophical discussions reduce to disagreements over the meaning of words: http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html
It's also true that both Pirsig and Alexander are reluctant to define their respective "quality". I think there are profound core truths in both of their ideas, but I think they're also too ambitious.
They're both trying to apply one concept to a multitude of things. It's almost religious -- there is one answer to all problems.
Good points. I was very heavily influenced by the book and still am in many respects, but ended up completely rejecting his conclusory argument. (Readers who don't want to spoil their experience of the book should move on now.)
Where I think he goes wrong is his conflation of quality with desire, as summed up in the phrase 'quality is what you like.' Something about this gnawed at me because from an early age I noticed that that aesthetic quality and taste were poorly correlated for me; there are things I like that are objectively crap and conversely there are art objects of high quality that I don't like or were even hostile towards at first.
My go-to example for this sort of thing is Francis Bacon, the English painter. I hate almost everything of his I've seen. It repulses me on a visceral level, such that I find his work almost physically painful to look at. But his painting is of very very high quality. Bacon was a true master of composition and other measurable factors of aesthetic quality. It is his mastery of those painterly techniques that make the unpleasantness of his work so impactful.
I have my doubts about Pirsig's relationship to art. You'll recall the tale of when he was on the faculty at Boise, and his friend (an art professor) came around one evening for a social purpose, to find Pirsig wrapping a table in string for the eminently practical purpose of holding it under tension so that the glue he had just applied could set properly. The art professor is surprised and Pirsig decides to have a little fun with him by saying it's an art project, which naturally intrigues the art professor who begins evaluating it without any awareness of its more quotidian nature.
this bothered me; Pirsig aimed to point out the arbitrary and unfalsifiable nature of art so as to disqualify it as a vehicle for truth, and indeed he is not alone; many people have such a reaction to modern art because abstraction or the fetishization of expression (in the MArxist rather than the Freudian sense) devalues the representational aspect, even though the latter is the easiest for people to evaluate by simply observing the degree of convergence between the quality of representation in the art work and their experience of the physical world.
But Pirsig was writing from the perspective of a technician or engineer, in which qualia can be ranked objectively in terms of their contribution to some truth-seeking function, qua his masterful exegesis of the scientific method for solving ordinary problems like undesirable behavior of a motorcycle. Valuable though this is, it falls apart in three ways when Pirsig sails too close to the rocks of aesthetics: function, scope and intentionality.
First, Pirsig has a poor understanding of artistic function; he doesn't seem to understand art in contexts other than pictorial. Art consists of implicit assertions about proportion and harmony which are more or less successful depending on the degree to which those assumptions reflect our understanding of nature.
To an artist, the pictorial content of a work is often the least interesting aspect - it's not uncommon to evaluate a picture upside down or through squinted eyes so as to be able to see less of the distracting subject matter. We are often much more interested in the claims that are being made about proportionality or symmetry - spatial, chromatic, luminous, or other types. These things are what abstract art is about, and the clarity with which such assertions are made are what cause some people to rave about the quality of what may seem like random splotches or clumsy daubings to the unseeing eye. Education helps but I'm not sure you can teach taste; I knew what I admired from a very young age, decades before accumulating enough knowledge to be able to objectively explain why I liked it.
By scope I mean the degree of universality in the cumulative assertions of the work, the specificity or generality of the truth it is asserting. This is very h...
It's funny, but this book probably played a greater role in my getting into motorcycling than all those years of poring over enthusiast mags like Motorcyclist or Cycle World combined. The thrill of raw speed is fleeting, but an epiphany... that lasts. A bike ride on back roads is a surprisingly natural place to think.
“In a car you're always in a compartment, and because you're used to it you don't realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You're a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.
On a cycle the frame is gone. You're completely in contact with it all. You're in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming.”
"Normally screws are so cheap and small and simple you think of them as unimportant. But now, as your Quality awareness becomes stronger, you realize that this one, individual, particular screw is neither cheap nor small nor unimportant. Right now this screw is worth exactly the selling price of the whole motorcycle, because the motorcycle is actually valueless until you get the screw out. With this reevaluation of the screw comes a willingness to expand your knowledge of it."
Solid gold. I just commented elsewhere about the gumption trap chapter, but the whole chapter this passage comes from is similarly insightful -- maybe more so.
I read this in high school and years later in university learned economists named this concept 'marginal utility.'
It's an important concept to understand in many aspects of life. In social and economic policy, it's important to remember resources are allocated per marginal utility, not by what they're worth. I.E. water is worth more to me than music, but I spend more money on music than water, and the music industry makes more than public water utilities. Seems obvious when stated like that, but it's often forgotten I find.
Ivestopedia has a different definition - "Marginal utility is the additional satisfaction a consumer gains from consuming one more unit of a good or service. Marginal utility is an important economic concept because economists use it to determine how much of an item a consumer will buy."
He's not talking about marginal utility. At least not unless he's talking about an extremely unusual utility function. Maybe my Econ background is getting in the way but...
Marginal utility, would be the increasing/decreasing value at the margins, for each additional screw.
Here I believe the point is in process engineering that more or less, something big may be disguised as something small. That you must thoroughly know your process to understand the problem(s) at hand.
It seems more analogous to "the straw that broke the camels back."
It is about marginal utility. You and others here are constraining yourself to thinking about the concept by thinking about it only as a utility function for one type of product or service. After all, that is how it is taught.
You can also think about the marginal utility of one glass of water, or one screw in a more complex utility function (as is always the case in life) than for just one widget, as you would say a factory manufacturing screws until cost > utility. After all, it's nothing more than the utility you gain, on the margin (holding all else constant), of that one additional screw or glass of water. In the author's example, he is discussing this exact phenomenon. The utility at the margin of that one additional screw.
I politely disagree. This example feels like a piece wise function which isn't a utility function (or at least not one I have ever seen and I've seen a lot). Having utility decrease from its maximum to zero, or negative, at the next value is odd to say the least.
>Having utility decrease from its maximum to zero, or negative, at the next value is odd to say the least
I didn't claim anything such as this and I'm having trouble understanding what you are responding to in my post.
A utility function is just a value of utility received at different quantities and costs. They are just basic models for helping to simplify our understanding the world. There's no need to begin comparing expertise with utility functions. The author is talking about the utility he receives at the margin of one additional widget in his decision making process, and what that this type of scenario (when a commonly cheap item can, in our decision making process, can have a high marginal utility--ie quantity is only 1 and 1 is necessary for a finished product) means to us in our human experience.
"Right now this screw is worth exactly the selling price of the whole motorcycle ..."
This is not marginal utility as somehow the value of this screw is equal to the entire amount of the motorcycle. There is no marginal utility to be had because decreasing it or increasing it has no effect. This would not be a continuous function. You could talk about the marginal utility of one having a motorcycle or no motorcycle. It's not related to the increase in screws.
Additionally, to say that expertise in a subject is not needed is perplexing to me. So much so I literally can't begin to understand how you'd surmise such a claim honestly.
How much economics did you take? I ask because it sounds like your understanding is that from a class or two, and not the bulk of your education. I think if it was we would not be having this discussion or you'd somehow prove it instead of reiterating the same points.
I'm sorry I did not explain the idea well enough for it to be understood.
I don't see it as productive to respond on the internet to the posturing and credentialing about who has seen more utility functions or taken more econ classes, as you wrote above.
I can assure you that Robert Pirsig garners utility at different costs and quantities in the scenario he described. That is all that a utility function is: a function of utility at varying quantities. This is an elementary topic and there's nothing more to be argued here. I'm sorry that explaining it again rubbed you the wrong way and encouraged you to write a condescending response towards me.
> the marginal utility of one glass of water, or one screw in a more complex utility function (as is always the case in life) than for just one widget,
I was taught the concept using the water example in undergradudate, and find the analogy is spot on. Other comments are considering more complicated marginal effects or the intersection/equilibrium of multiple marginal effects and confusing the point.
It's an important concept but it's not marginal utility. Marginal utility is the degree to which adding one more of something will exceed the cost of doing so.
To stick with the motorcycle analogy, suppose I am designing a motorcycle as a manufacturer and I find that it takes 6 bolts to securely fix the engine to the frame. If I use fewer, accidents are very likely to occur, I will get sued, sales will collapse. As it is, accidents will still occur once a year - but that's the industry average (let's say) so I can pay out compensation for that one accident without seeing any real impact on sales. (I have magic litigation insurance so my liability costs are totally predictable for this example.)
Suppose each bolt costs me $10. If I add 8 bolts, the risk of failure drops to zero. I calculate the cost of accident involving my bike, divide it by the number of bikes I expect to sell, and I find it's about $25 per bike; installing those two extra bolts creates $5 of marginal utility or 2.50 each so I go ahead and do it.
Should I not go ahead and add 1 more bolts? No, because it will cost an additional $10 for no noticeable increase in safety, so the marginal utility is -$10.
Marginal utility is a consumption function. By itself, it says nothing about cost or what a producer will do,
> In economics, utility is the satisfaction or benefit derived by consuming a product; thus the marginal utility of a good or service is the change in the utility from an increase in the consumption of that good or service.
By contrast, marginal cost is about change in a producer's cost function with changes in quantity,
> marginal cost is the change in the opportunity cost that arises when the quantity produced is incremented by one unit, that is, it is the cost of producing one more unit of a good.
The commenter starts out using the word "cost" along with the rest of his example which is elaborated upon to describe the MC=MR profit maximizing function.
"Marginal utility is the degree to which adding one more of something will exceed the cost of doing so."
That's a meaningless statement, because you can't compare/subtract marginal utility and marginal cost. The latter is measured in some currency (e.g. USD) but the former is not.
You can compare the marginal utility of X with the marginal utility of the cost of X, but then what you're really doing is comparing the marginal utility of X with the marginal utility of Y, where Y is the highest-utility alternative use for the marginal cost of X.
Anyway, back to my actual point: the comment to which you responded was talking about marginal utility. I'll attempt to elaborate on the example (music vs. water). Water is more valuable than music. That sounds right intuitively, but what do we mean? What we mean is that if we had to give up 100% of something, we'd choose to give up 100% of music instead of 100% of water. But all that says is that there's some finite amount of water that has higher marginal utility than all the music in the world. And that's right. If I need a minimum of 300ml of water to live per day, then I'd give anything for that 300ml. Maybe I'd give a lot for the an extra 300ml per day also, but it's not as important. And by the time I'm drinking 5 litres per day, I'd probably rather spend money on CDs than buy more water, as the marginal utility is zero.
Marginal utility is from the perspective of a consumer not a producer, so cost doesn't come into it. The analogy that stuck with me was eating bars of chocolate from the initial one which tastes delicious, and thus has high MU, until the one where you puke, by which point the MU has become negative. Cost is pretty much constant throughout.
Personally I think that's just supply and demand. Water is plentiful and the costs of access are low (at least when there's a tap nearby). So even though it's extremely important it's not too limited a resource...now. In the future, that will change for many people in the world. There are predictions of wars about water [1], but there won't be many wars about music. Demand increasing for water, harder-to-increase supply.
Strange, I find that it's anti-capitalists that make that error. The few who do not in my experience , if from anywhere, come from the Austrian economics camp.
Indeed. For extra goodness, buy a few packs of stainless allen head screws to replace the cadnium plated steel ones that always strip. They always strip, because they are not phillips, but JIS screws. The dot on the head gives it away.
I had exactly this paragraph running through my mind as I was taking a cross threaded bottom bracket out of a cheap bike. The crank extractor had munged the threads of the axle, and the bb cups were frozen tight to the frame. So this crappy loose bottom bracket was exactly as valuable as the bike. And I was out of tools and ideas.
Thankfully, I had an option at he didn't have, which was punt to the bike shop and pay them 12 bucks to get the thing out and chase the threads.
> Right now this screw is worth exactly the selling price of the whole motorcycle, because the motorcycle is actually valueless until you get the screw out.
If I read the situation correctly, the motorcycle with this screw is certainly not valueless. It can be turned into a working motorcycle far more easily than most other things can be turned into a working motorcycle. If it would take a competent technician an hour to remove the screw, then the screw shouldn't affect the selling price of the motorcycle by more than a couple of hundred dollars.
It's important to remember that small, trivial-seeming things can actually be important, which I think is what he's pointing at. But it's also important to remember that a thing's potential has value beyond its current abilities.
I would say, surely the author realises this and has decided to go for 'valueless' for dramatic effect. As a fellow somewhat pedant I totally agree, it's not intellectually consistent and would probably change me into a more disagreeable mode whilst reading it. That said I wonder how many flawed but worthwhile things would not come to be if such consistency was universally applied...
When the guy's whole point is quality and intellectual consistency it's a bit wearing to read things like this though -- terrible, tedious book. If you wonder what interacting with a person with borderline personality disorder is like, I recommend it.
I understand both you and I (probably, I'm sorry if I am wrong in my assumption and you actually work in mental health) have strong experiences that, in the big scheme of things, are just anecdotic evidence on this subject. With that in mind, I read the book (a few times), and have someone diagnosed with borderline disorder in the family, and don't find many coincidence points between Robert/Phaedrus as described there, and my experiences.
Perhaps a bit with Chris, though, and maybe that is what you meant.
Back to the 'whole selling point' I think he was being overly dramatic, it's a novel after all. I think his point comes across better when he goes through the value traps part of the book, and interpret his point the following way:
Sometimes you are working on some machine (physical, like his motorcycle, or abstract, like software), and you get stuck on a problem due to a seemingly very meaningless part of said machine. I think his 'whole selling point' message is: when this happens, you need to reassess the value you give this part, as, until you get to resolve what it is causing it to get you stuck, its value to you is pretty much the value of the whole machine. Like how a crashing bug means that specific software is useless, in the specific use case that triggers the bug, until that is fixed. If it's some weird edge case, the software may be perfectly usable for most people, but if you are one of the few affected by it, the most likely few lines of code causing the defect render the whole thing useless, they're the selling point of the software to you individually.
Now, obviously, speaking of the actual physical motorcycle, it's not that he can't sell it without resolving the problem that particular screw is causing him. There are probably skilled mechanics with the right training and tools for which the screw would cause little to no problem. But to him: he can't ride it until that is resolved, so the screw is as important as the entire machine until he gets that resolved.
I faced this specific problem just a couple of days ago and remembering the book (which I read years ago) helped me step away from the problem and come back to it with a fresh angle. But the reality was the same: it's not that I would have lost my physical entity (a window, in this case). Surely, I could have called a professional carpenter to help me with it. But to me, without getting someone else involved, that little piece (it was also a screw, a rusty one) was worth the whole window.
Get stranded on the side of the road (something riders are almost pathologically averse to, with good reason) and your opinion will change dramatically.
If you're stuck at the side of a road, miles from anywhere, without a cellphone, a broken motorcycle has a value that's very close to zero. It might have a great deal of value in a workshop or a breaker's yard, but at that precise point in spacetime it's just a funny-shaped rock.
I bet his mind was blown the first time he got a flat. "Right now this tire is worth more than the selling price of the whole motorcycle." Or ran out of fuel. "Right now that Citgo sign is worth more than the selling price of the whole motorcycle." It sounds profound, except it's not.
I would submit that, contained within the discussion of the screw is a description of the Buddhist concept of Pratītyasamutpāda [1], or in English: dependent origination.
That is to say, without the screw, there is no motorcycle; without the motorcycle, there is no screw. In this concept, things cannot exist without being connected, dependent, and intertwined with one another. There is nothing that exists independently.
Or possibly you missed the point? This doesn't seem to give him the benefit of any doubt.
I won't defend the book vigorously, but your reading of this part seems both superficial and easily dismissed with a moments thought. Pirsig is obviously driving at something deeper, even if you don't think he completely gets there.
It's a book about thinking and changing how you do it, after all. You can't expect to get much out of something like that if you can't or won't examine your own cognitive bias as you do.
you're right, it's not that profound, which should give us that much more respect for Pirsig for pointing it out because most people completely take for granted that context is the kernel of value.
Have you never felt frustrated looking for a pen and not finding one when you need one. The frustration increases when you do find a few pens and none work. the price of the pen is determined by the demand and supply but it's value at the moment can't be calculated.
"error"... Analyzing your Self is bound to uncover errors, and leave new ones behind. Persig was" enjoying" a catharsis through the dramatic, poetic introspection. How many "errors" will we miss in the discovery, analysis and resolution of our many other errors?
yeah, you really can't just pull a quote out of this book and analyze it in stand-alone. I just re-read the book, and that sentence really had nothing to do with the economics of labor and motorcycle maintenance. OP's quote was more a reminder about a specific chapter of importance for people who had already read the book.
I see it this way: a motorcycle has only one inherent value - the ability to take you from point A to B more efficiently.
If it can't fulfill this core function without the screw, it is valueless.
Of course, you can pawn the motorcycle for thousands of dollars, but for that, you would have to have a marketplace and buyers. You can also turn some parts into tools and probably repurpose the tyres into something useful.
But again, to do that, you would have to have the knowhow and the necessary tools and time for repurposing.
If you were in an isolated environment with no other people around and no additional tools, a motorcycle that doesn't function is as good as "valueless".
I want to couch this in the statement that I understand the sentiment: Seemingly unimportant or trivial things _do_ still have value, usually in their small contribution to the whole.
With that said, the motorcycle is clearly not value-less without the screw the same way it is not value-less without a rider.
The instant you dismount the motorcycle it is no longer physically capable of performing its function. Yet it of course still has value.
> With that said, the motorcycle is clearly not value-less without the screw the same way it is not value-less without a rider.
I don't think your comparison makes sense. A motorcycle is not broken without a rider; it is not being used to move from point A to point B, but it is capable of being used to move from point A to point B.
A broken motorcycle is not being used to move from point A to point B, however it is not capable of being used for that purpose. The broken motorcycle is clearly at a lower state than a functional motorcycle.
Perhaps a comparison that works would be (a broken motorcycle + a rider) is as worthless as (a working motorcycle + a broken/ignorant rider).
Two non-functional motorcycles: 1 that will become functional with the addition of a missing screw and 1 that will become functional with the addition of a missing rider.
Neither can be used to move from point A to point B without the addition of their missing component.
If we assume I have the appropriate skills/training to successfully operate the motorcycle that is missing a rider can we not just as easily assume that I have the appropriate knowledge/materials to add the missing screw?
E: The point I'm trying to make is that it is the same scenario. We could argue over which assumption is more practical (how hard is to to find and install the screw vs ride a motorcycle) but that is a separate point.
The screw seems most important when it is the 'weak link'.
But the same is still true of all other components.
I note that a motorcycle's selling price is not part of its inherent value, and Pirsig was the one who brought that up. I fully agree that there's a certain type of value that a motorcycle lacks when it doesn't work; but then that screw isn't worth "exactly the selling price" of the motorcycle, it's worth the type of value that the motorcycle doesn't currently have.
Yes it's like the difference between kinetic energy and potential energy. A rock at rest at the edge of a cliff has no kinetic energy, but a lot of potential energy.
I guess Pirsig was making a point about value and not about potential value, which is leading to a larger point. In the moment, value is all you have. Potential value is a future value that requires time to realize.
I have two separate reactions to your suggestion that it's important to remember potential value, the Zen reaction and the Writer's reaction.
Even though Pirsig wasn't going for Buddhism, it's fairly consistent with Zen thinking to make observations about the momentary values of things. My Zen point is that the purpose of meditation and much of Buddhist practice is to see only value and to eliminate potential. When you learn about how to meditate, you learn how to stop your mind from thinking about the future and concentrate completely on the here and now. Remembering something's potential value is antithetical to this way of thinking. Not because it's untrue, but because it's un-now.
My writer's reaction is that while it will always be important to remember things other than the point the author was making. Is adding your point to the author's words helping us to understand his? If Pirsig reminded us about potential value in this sentence, would it improve this particular narrative? Does it open a path that gets to his larger point either more efficiently or more effectively? It might, that might be part of Pirsig's thesis. Or it might be taking a narrative path that doesn't lead to the same place.
It's important to see not just the value of the quote itself - the truth or completeness of an individual passage - but to also remember the potential value of the words as being the destination of the story -- where they lead and where it ends is as important as where it was at any given moment.
There's a rather negative critique floating around that someone is bound to post, sooner than later. And it is, in itself, worth reading. It's possibly even right–I read both the book and the critique twice, and came away believing both, somewhat paradoxically.
But I wish to make the case that the book is worth reading for its literary value alone. The narrative parts are a gentle, beautiful telling of this father/son trip across the northwest, and reading it will leave you with enjoying nature (or, more generally, reality) with something like a calm optimism.
Agreed, Zen and the Art has real narrative value - including considerable suspense - whether you buy the philosophy or not. And frankly I do, despite understanding why some call it hippy pseudo-psychology. His second book Lila goes into it more methodically - but the literary narrative there is not so taught, kind of sadder.
That he's a "phony, self-congratulatory, pretentious buffoon" according to the top rated review on Goodreads [1]. That it's new-age, pseudo-psychology masquerading as philosophy.
I don't share these views, personally. But knowing a fair few philosophers myself, I think the Analytic school is powerful in the US. Dominated by figures like Bertrand Russell, who rely on a formal grammar and logical syntax. Philosophy is a science in this view and there's no room for narrative.
ZatAoMM falls into the Continental school and has more in common in its approach with figures like Nietzsche and Marx, relying on a narrative or historical approach. Neither of those particular figures, nor the Continental school in general, are much in vogue and thus I think Zen gets rejected for being both Continental and popular.
EDIT: It's also frequently observed that Pirsig offers nothing new to philosophy. This is probably correct. I think the narrative aspect is what really separates the work. I found this while searching around a bit looking for further information, and it really sums up what I feel is ZatAoMM's greatest contribution:
'hat makes Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance superlative (and unique, to my knowledge) is that Pirsig successfully blended the history of philosophy with the history of his psyche, allegorizing each into the other." [2]
Yeah, sounds more like a review of the reviewer than an actual review of the book. I mean, fair enough. The first time I read siddhartha I thought the main character was an asshole, and couldn't figure out why anyone would live a life like that character. Read it again a few years ago, and realized I was an idiot, had _completely_ missed the point the first time through as a teenager.
"Zen" has its strengths and weaknesses, but I found its discussion about "gumption traps" (Chapter 26, I believe) to be absolute, solid gold. Pirsig's description of what it's like to do gritty work on a complex system -- and all the logical, mental, and emotional blocks associated with that -- really resonated with my experience as a software engineer, and they've helped me get better at being aware of those blocks and getting past them.
The "gumption trap", both the term and the definition, is a great insight. I tend to find gumption traps really annoying and it's good to know why I'm annoyed and how to push through. When a friend of mine recommended the book he used this concept as the example of why it was amazing.
I recommend having the book Working Effectively with Legacy Software by Michael Feathers in your library, as it is essentially a practical guide to techniques for minimising gumption traps in software engineering.
I was kind of a punk in high school and I was in a week-long suspension room for skipping a bunch of classes. The room monitor was this cool older dude with a long beard who talked a lot about life, philosophy, and things like that.
We weren't allowed to read or do anything but sit in boredom during suspension (school rules) but he made an exception for me if I wanted to read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (at his recommendation).
I bought a copy and brought it to suspension the next day, read the whole thing that week. Good memories thanks to the room monitor dude and an excellent book.
Strange and prevalent (at least in the US). Every state I've lived in has some form of this, be it in-school or out-of-school suspension. It seems like a way to train kids for prison. It's mostly just a way to keep them from disrupting others; in other words, it's the easiest way to deal with the kid (with no thought toward helping them).
It's amazing public schools are permitted to do this. There's nothing for the kid to grow from in a child sitting around doing nothing. Children grow from experiences and challenges. Minds forced into isolation with no stimulation are stunted, and there's scientific evidence to support that. Obviously one week is not going to make or break a person, but this school policy is exceptionally ignorant.
Yup. I got interested in Japan after reading Shogun as a kid.
When I was in college, I finally had the chance to study it well and they had a great program. What I learned there taught me how to learn in general, which I then used to learn Computer Science, which opened up a bunch more for me.
Perhaps: having tacitly written a 'compiler' for a natural language, he had aquired a subconscious appreciation for a field for which the artificial language compiler is in part the foundation. :-P
I think we like to believe that every child wants to be a creative spirit. But many of them are monsters. It's not till later in life that you develop a conscience, and many people in high school are straight-up barbaric to each other. It's hard to make school interesting with people like that in the system, and it's even harder to deal with those types.
A friend with an affluent upbringing was telling me about how his school would filter out anyone they wanted, and give them the option to either transfer out or be expelled. Usually this was done for kids who had hit other kids. I couldn't help but think "You were way luckier than you probably appreciate." I thought it was just a fact of life that when you go to school as a kid, you have to worry about being attacked. Not so, apparently.
Interesting point. Figuring out how to teach agency and spread consciousness on a planet still ruled by the law of the jungle in many ways is definitely one of humanity's biggest challenges.
I went to a private prep school for high school, and a weird aspect that people didn't talk about very much was that they expelled people at such a high rate (partly to preserve a better learning environment for the other students).
I think I recall someone from the administration estimating that at least 10% of students were expelled before graduation. (At least I think it was 10% over the course of four years, not 10% every year.)
Learning any language changes your thinking patterns to the implicit assumptions built into the language structure. you may find the work of Ferdinand Saussure of interest.
Just a simple example of learning Dutch, which blew my mind.
1. Monday in Dutch is maandag, which means 'moonday'
2. Friday in Dutch is vrijdag, which means 'free day' (and is pronouced 'freydag')
Obviously the French is lundi, but I never made the connection with lunar.
So for 28 years (4 year's worth of Moondays) of my life I never considered the connection between Sunday, Monday and Moonday.
Perhaps it's not scientific fact but actually learning another language fluently and seeing the differences was pretty freaking awesome to me.
There's other fascinating differences like the difference between 'Icing sugar' in English and 'Flour suger' in Dutch, one explains what you do with it vs the other explains what it resembles.
Perhaps it only challenges simple brains like mine.
I studied German and Japanese and it was very interesting indeed. However, what I was responding to is the common misnomer that language studies create cognitive improvements as my high school advisor and the above poster alluded to. The scientific consensus at the moment is that so far it only appears to help in word search ability. There's no other established improvement.
Learning new languages can definitely make you better-informed about language (for example about etymologies, like you mentioned, and about different ways of doing things with language on every level from phonology to pragmatics). When I studied Portuguese after Latin and Arabic after Hebrew, I was making connections between languages all day long, due to their historical relationships. Many of those connections would be missed by monolingual native speakers, even though they have much more overall ability in the languages!
It's also interesting to see how different languages give you different options. For example, Latin has infinitives that can inflect for tense and voice, so you can say "to have written" or "to be written" in single words, not just "to write". Portuguese lacks these, but has infinitives that can inflect for person and number, so you can say "for us to write" in a single word. English has neither! This is just scratching the surface of grammatical variation within closely related languages.
I think the controversy alluded to in this thread is that there is an old, fascinating theory that people think qualitatively differently when using different languages, or else that some languages are more effective at or conducive to thinking certain thoughts. (One form of this idea is called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, even though it's not clear that Sapir and Whorf understood it in exactly the same way.) There are many suggestive examples in support of this idea, but the strongest forms of the claim are in disrepute in the academic linguistics community.
The Sapir-Whorf sorts of issues are potentially rather different from saying that you'll understand language better by learning more languages, since they suggest even that you may understand the world as a whole differently.
I think it was the program (Ohio State has an excellent program) that provided me with the tools for this.
It came down to imitating successful patterns of speech and behavior (they called them core conversations), the heavy focus on proper intonation (more imitation, if your intonation is off, you're never going to make Japanese speakers comfortable listening to your speech) and the practice of spaced repetition (through flashcards, for learning kanji), which I had never been exposed to growing up.
For that last one, I'm actually in debt of my buddy who got me into the kanji flashcards.
Why does high school have to be so boring? The worst subject for me was math. I was struggling in math, and was less than motivated. I ended up failing the state exam freshman year and went to summer school to re-learn the material. I studied a couple hours a day during the 6 or so weeks of summer school. What I learned here was discipline and how to plow through something you're not crazy about to reach a goal.
I never truly "got" the trigonometry and geometry until I started going graphics programming. High school is too much theory and not enough application of the theory and experimentation.
Sitting quietly for a half hour with only one's own thoughts is hardly as terrible as you make it sound. If anything, it builds character. It is an experience and a challenge.
Keep in mind that detention was introduced after corporal punishment became socially unacceptable.
I missed that. Still, I think it's reasonable. Being forced to sit and think is not such a terrible punishment, and it seems that it "fits the crime" in the case of truancy.
I must have ready ZMM at least seven times (so far) in my life. Back when I was taking an undergraduate, I read it the first time and was inspired to take as many English courses as I could. I wanted to be a technical writer. After a series of co-op work-terms in the field (the companies loved a tech writer who could also program), I landed a full-time job as a technical writer in a large telecommunications company. I would read ZMM on the bus to work for inspiration. Pirsig could write with such clarity that I tried to emulate him in my writing (as I'm sure all poor writers do). I eventually returned to programming as it was my first love. The job as a tech writer definitely improved my writing skills, and reading ZMM definitely improved my life.
Pynchon worked as a technical writer for Boeing, and Vonnegut worked as a publicist for GE. You can see how their appreciation of tech shaped their future work. You're in good company!
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[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 161 ms ] threadZen and the art of motorcycle maintenance was one of the first books on philosophy that I read outside of my philosophy curriculum at university and it stayed with me.
It's a great book discussing the metaphysics of quality, but not just that. It's written in a captivating way, mixing both the 'food for thought' as well as a pleasant narative about a father and a son on a motorcycle trip.
It's one of the philosophy books that I can recommend to people who are not directly interested in philosophy as well, which gave me some quite fun discussions with my friends about the topics in the book without being too deep into the philosophy itself.
"Zen was published in 1974, after being rejected by 121 publishing houses...then Pirsig lived reclusively and worked on his second book Lila for 17 years before its publication in 1991."
"Quality is, how do you know what it is, or how do you know that it even exists? If no one knows what it is, then for all practical purposes it doesn't exist at all. But for all practical purposes it really does exist."
EDIT: (And, yeesh, it was forty years ago. What "spoiler"? BTW, Vader is Luke's father.)
Chris may have been murdered long after the events of the book itself, but in the reading timeline, it's mere moments after finishing the main text.
Personally, I wish no one had mentioned it here.
your thoughts probably also stand on their own and could be interesting for people who have read the book.
Before this book I couldnt understand why Apple existed, it exerted so much control over its users, it abstracted away the intimate details etc. Apple appeals to users because so many of them are afraid of being intimate with their tools, they just want it to work.
I say i was a total robot because to me it was all about the facts. The fact was i could get a "higher spec" machine for less money and have more control over it. But I couldnt empathize with the Apple users. Now i get it.
[edited to remove spoiler I shouldn't have mentioned -- my apologies]
I've always told me friends that it's about Western philosophy and mental illness. Those two subjects are covered just as much as Zen and Motorcycle maintenance.
The parts about your relationship to the machine will definitely resonate with engineers, but that's not all it's about. I guess that is why it is a great book -- there's something for everyone and it can be read in multiple ways.
I have read ZMM many times, it is on the short list of books that have had a profound influence on me. But in college I read a different set of philosophers.
Anybody with some education in philosophy figures out that utter, logical-proof certainty can't be had. So what does one do for epistemology instead? There are two main alternatives:
-- Religious-style faith. This is not my preferred choice.
-- An aesthetically-tinged approach to epistemology.
What I mean by the latter is, for example, generalizing Occam's Razor into usability. The problem with Occam's Razor is that it says, in effect, "In case of doubt go with the simpler answer", without giving a general way to judge what's simpler. Any solution to that problem winds up being an aesthetic kind of judgment.
It's hard to communicate the "essential meaning" of Occam's Razor in simple language, because the only good analogies for it involve things like compression algorithms, quantum physics or topology.
If you know what the word "axiom" really means, and can picture an address of a thing in a set taking up space (e.g. bytes of a URL) as your query gets more specific, then Occam's Razor is a very "obvious" statement about the probability of reification of mathematical objects in our universe given their size. If you don't have that context, someone can talk for an hour and it won't communicate the point.
It's really not. Here's a few that don't make the same mistake.
- Plurality must never be posited without necessity.
- Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.
- Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.
- Whenever possible, substitute constructions out of known entities for inferences to unknown entities.
- favor hypotheses that make the fewest unwarranted assumptions about the data from which they are derived.
All of these are more correct and communicate the principles better than the "simplest" formulation which is just flat-out wrong without extremely heavy clarification of what "simplest" means (at which point you may as well use one of the above).
Doesn't violate the minimum message length one, though. I've not heard that one before & I like it.
This is a common objection to which supporters would say means you're not reviewing the data in enough depth. It's a fair argument tho.
Given Occam is supposed to only be a guideline and not some kind of universal law it wouldn't actually matter if QMW did violate it though (even though that's debatable anyhow).
kolmogorov complexity? But then there is no universal measure, so it's relative.
It would be a narrower, less generally applicable, version... but a completely valid formulation.
It was a common statement of a generally justifiable philosophical tool that happened to be commonly used by theologians like Occam (who wasn't that first to use the idea - Aristotle stated something similar).
The intertwining of philosophy and theology makes it related but I'd say your characterization was simplistic and quite incorrect overall.
Most versions that actually work can be lightheartedly equated to a "Principle of Least Foofarah".
Yeesh.
If we're in a situation where we get good data about what's right, we can just do science and it doesn't really matter what authorities or dogs think.
The place where you need non-scientific epistemologies is when you don't have good feedback data.
And sometimes even when there is data, bad predictors can mutually self reinforce. Racist cops arrest more black kids, more black kids get convicted, that proves racist cops are good predictors of criminality. It's not true, but the data says it's true.
It's equivalent to a scientist doing many studies and only publishing the ones that are positive. The stats only work for independent measures but nothing is independent especially when you are using predictions to make policy.
Or, "how to live" isn't an epistemological question. So demanding that an epistemology accept aesthetic standards to accommodate concerns about how to live is confused.
And the judgment as to whether a particular fuzzy match is good enough is, in essence, an aesthetic one.
Around the same time I read Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman [1], and Illusions by Richard Bach [2], and felt they were both better than Zen. At the end of the day I think the real value of any of those texts is the introduction to philosophy/self-discovery in general, in a really accessible form.
"A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at such a speed, it feels an impulsion... this is the place to go now.
But the sky knows the reason and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons." - Illusions
1. https://www.amazon.com/Way-Peaceful-Warrior-Changes-Lives/dp...
2. https://www.amazon.com/Illusions-Adventures-Reluctant-Messia...
I also dislike Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, but I can see that many other people found value in it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upaya
At the time, I thought it was one of the most significant things I'd read. Of course, I was young, and it was a long time ago. (And then, life and injury and illness and... well, a distinct lack of quality happened, and I never got back to it.)
I've been meaning, intending, lately, to reread it. Last year, I was invited into a book club. I've considered suggesting it -- I think I will.
Quality. Eloquence, in a word.
P.S. I've been thinking about getting a bike and riding for a summer. Adequate, but not overdone -- and quiet.
Piece by piece, this rough idea has been sketching itself in.
Don't know why I'm telling HN, this, or why you should care. Except that we all should care about quality. And about a man who thought and felt hard on the topic and in turn gave us much to think about. Reflected much of ourselves, to ourselves -- giving us eyes and ears into ourselves and our choices.
Anyway...
:'(
http://theaetetus.tamu.edu/online-texts/zen/zen-afterword.ht...
Chris said something which the witnesses could not hear. His assailant became angrier. Chris then said something that made him even more furious. He jammed the knife into Chris's chest.
There's "evil," and then there's turning a mugging into getting knifed in the chest. Unless you're saying that this was the norm for SF muggings in the 80's. It's pretty likely that 22 year-old guy acted smart. That doesn't make it right, all I said was that I'd be interested in what exactly he said to provoke the response.
Amazing when things like that are foretold. (Yes I know, survivorship bias blah blah)
He said he wasn't sure, but the thesis on Quality appeared to turn into an anti-Aristotelian thesis. If this was true he had chosen an appropriate place to present it. Great Universities proceeded in a Hegelian fashion and any school which could not accept a thesis contradicting its fundamental tenets was in a rut. This, Phædrus claimed, was the thesis the University of Chicago was waiting for.
He admitted the claim was grandiose and that value judgments were actually impossible for him to make since no person could be an impartial judge of his own cause. But if someone else were to produce a thesis which purported to be a major breakthrough between Eastern and Western philosophy, between religious mysticism and scientific positivism, he would think it of major historic importance, a thesis which would place the University miles ahead. In any event, he said, no one was really accepted in Chicago until he'd rubbed someone out. It was time Aristotle got his."
"In other words, any true German mechanic, with a half-century of mechanical finesse behind him, would have concluded that this particular solution to this particular technical problem was perfect."
Anyone else remember that bit? I now ride a big BMW R1200RT. I wonder if this book influenced me to do that? RIP Mr Pirsig
--
Signed,
Owner of a '14 R1200GSA
http://venturearete.org/ResearchProjects/ProfessorGurr/galle...
And for those thinking a 900lb. Honda Goldwing is required for cross-country travel, Pirsig's bike was Honda Hawk 305, as in 305cc. It put out 28 horsepower. I'll bet there are scooters today that put out more power. And Pirsig loaded it with two people and camping gear and rode it cross-country.
(HN being one of the few places I can not only admit this, but get good-natured grief for using the 'new' models. :D)
I also have another saved up, ready to give my younger brother-in-law as he prepares for engineering classes. I plan on getting him as addicted to RPN as the rest of us.
HP 41C!
Death can jump off a cliff.
Http://skilesare.github.com/immortality
I do agree they are related, but though the use of the word "quality" in both contexts probably confuses issues rather than illuminates them.
I agree with Paul Graham when he says that most philosophical discussions reduce to disagreements over the meaning of words: http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html
It's also true that both Pirsig and Alexander are reluctant to define their respective "quality". I think there are profound core truths in both of their ideas, but I think they're also too ambitious.
They're both trying to apply one concept to a multitude of things. It's almost religious -- there is one answer to all problems.
Where I think he goes wrong is his conflation of quality with desire, as summed up in the phrase 'quality is what you like.' Something about this gnawed at me because from an early age I noticed that that aesthetic quality and taste were poorly correlated for me; there are things I like that are objectively crap and conversely there are art objects of high quality that I don't like or were even hostile towards at first.
My go-to example for this sort of thing is Francis Bacon, the English painter. I hate almost everything of his I've seen. It repulses me on a visceral level, such that I find his work almost physically painful to look at. But his painting is of very very high quality. Bacon was a true master of composition and other measurable factors of aesthetic quality. It is his mastery of those painterly techniques that make the unpleasantness of his work so impactful.
I have my doubts about Pirsig's relationship to art. You'll recall the tale of when he was on the faculty at Boise, and his friend (an art professor) came around one evening for a social purpose, to find Pirsig wrapping a table in string for the eminently practical purpose of holding it under tension so that the glue he had just applied could set properly. The art professor is surprised and Pirsig decides to have a little fun with him by saying it's an art project, which naturally intrigues the art professor who begins evaluating it without any awareness of its more quotidian nature.
this bothered me; Pirsig aimed to point out the arbitrary and unfalsifiable nature of art so as to disqualify it as a vehicle for truth, and indeed he is not alone; many people have such a reaction to modern art because abstraction or the fetishization of expression (in the MArxist rather than the Freudian sense) devalues the representational aspect, even though the latter is the easiest for people to evaluate by simply observing the degree of convergence between the quality of representation in the art work and their experience of the physical world.
But Pirsig was writing from the perspective of a technician or engineer, in which qualia can be ranked objectively in terms of their contribution to some truth-seeking function, qua his masterful exegesis of the scientific method for solving ordinary problems like undesirable behavior of a motorcycle. Valuable though this is, it falls apart in three ways when Pirsig sails too close to the rocks of aesthetics: function, scope and intentionality.
First, Pirsig has a poor understanding of artistic function; he doesn't seem to understand art in contexts other than pictorial. Art consists of implicit assertions about proportion and harmony which are more or less successful depending on the degree to which those assumptions reflect our understanding of nature.
To an artist, the pictorial content of a work is often the least interesting aspect - it's not uncommon to evaluate a picture upside down or through squinted eyes so as to be able to see less of the distracting subject matter. We are often much more interested in the claims that are being made about proportionality or symmetry - spatial, chromatic, luminous, or other types. These things are what abstract art is about, and the clarity with which such assertions are made are what cause some people to rave about the quality of what may seem like random splotches or clumsy daubings to the unseeing eye. Education helps but I'm not sure you can teach taste; I knew what I admired from a very young age, decades before accumulating enough knowledge to be able to objectively explain why I liked it.
By scope I mean the degree of universality in the cumulative assertions of the work, the specificity or generality of the truth it is asserting. This is very h...
“In a car you're always in a compartment, and because you're used to it you don't realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You're a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.
On a cycle the frame is gone. You're completely in contact with it all. You're in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming.”
It's an important concept to understand in many aspects of life. In social and economic policy, it's important to remember resources are allocated per marginal utility, not by what they're worth. I.E. water is worth more to me than music, but I spend more money on music than water, and the music industry makes more than public water utilities. Seems obvious when stated like that, but it's often forgotten I find.
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marginalutility.asp
Marginal utility, would be the increasing/decreasing value at the margins, for each additional screw.
Here I believe the point is in process engineering that more or less, something big may be disguised as something small. That you must thoroughly know your process to understand the problem(s) at hand.
It seems more analogous to "the straw that broke the camels back."
I didn't claim anything such as this and I'm having trouble understanding what you are responding to in my post.
A utility function is just a value of utility received at different quantities and costs. They are just basic models for helping to simplify our understanding the world. There's no need to begin comparing expertise with utility functions. The author is talking about the utility he receives at the margin of one additional widget in his decision making process, and what that this type of scenario (when a commonly cheap item can, in our decision making process, can have a high marginal utility--ie quantity is only 1 and 1 is necessary for a finished product) means to us in our human experience.
"Right now this screw is worth exactly the selling price of the whole motorcycle ..."
This is not marginal utility as somehow the value of this screw is equal to the entire amount of the motorcycle. There is no marginal utility to be had because decreasing it or increasing it has no effect. This would not be a continuous function. You could talk about the marginal utility of one having a motorcycle or no motorcycle. It's not related to the increase in screws.
Additionally, to say that expertise in a subject is not needed is perplexing to me. So much so I literally can't begin to understand how you'd surmise such a claim honestly.
How much economics did you take? I ask because it sounds like your understanding is that from a class or two, and not the bulk of your education. I think if it was we would not be having this discussion or you'd somehow prove it instead of reiterating the same points.
I don't see it as productive to respond on the internet to the posturing and credentialing about who has seen more utility functions or taken more econ classes, as you wrote above.
I can assure you that Robert Pirsig garners utility at different costs and quantities in the scenario he described. That is all that a utility function is: a function of utility at varying quantities. This is an elementary topic and there's nothing more to be argued here. I'm sorry that explaining it again rubbed you the wrong way and encouraged you to write a condescending response towards me.
I was taught the concept using the water example in undergradudate, and find the analogy is spot on. Other comments are considering more complicated marginal effects or the intersection/equilibrium of multiple marginal effects and confusing the point.
To stick with the motorcycle analogy, suppose I am designing a motorcycle as a manufacturer and I find that it takes 6 bolts to securely fix the engine to the frame. If I use fewer, accidents are very likely to occur, I will get sued, sales will collapse. As it is, accidents will still occur once a year - but that's the industry average (let's say) so I can pay out compensation for that one accident without seeing any real impact on sales. (I have magic litigation insurance so my liability costs are totally predictable for this example.)
Suppose each bolt costs me $10. If I add 8 bolts, the risk of failure drops to zero. I calculate the cost of accident involving my bike, divide it by the number of bikes I expect to sell, and I find it's about $25 per bike; installing those two extra bolts creates $5 of marginal utility or 2.50 each so I go ahead and do it.
Should I not go ahead and add 1 more bolts? No, because it will cost an additional $10 for no noticeable increase in safety, so the marginal utility is -$10.
No. That's marginal cost.
> In economics, utility is the satisfaction or benefit derived by consuming a product; thus the marginal utility of a good or service is the change in the utility from an increase in the consumption of that good or service.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_utility
By contrast, marginal cost is about change in a producer's cost function with changes in quantity,
> marginal cost is the change in the opportunity cost that arises when the quantity produced is incremented by one unit, that is, it is the cost of producing one more unit of a good.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_cost
The commenter starts out using the word "cost" along with the rest of his example which is elaborated upon to describe the MC=MR profit maximizing function.
That's a meaningless statement, because you can't compare/subtract marginal utility and marginal cost. The latter is measured in some currency (e.g. USD) but the former is not.
You can compare the marginal utility of X with the marginal utility of the cost of X, but then what you're really doing is comparing the marginal utility of X with the marginal utility of Y, where Y is the highest-utility alternative use for the marginal cost of X.
Anyway, back to my actual point: the comment to which you responded was talking about marginal utility. I'll attempt to elaborate on the example (music vs. water). Water is more valuable than music. That sounds right intuitively, but what do we mean? What we mean is that if we had to give up 100% of something, we'd choose to give up 100% of music instead of 100% of water. But all that says is that there's some finite amount of water that has higher marginal utility than all the music in the world. And that's right. If I need a minimum of 300ml of water to live per day, then I'd give anything for that 300ml. Maybe I'd give a lot for the an extra 300ml per day also, but it's not as important. And by the time I'm drinking 5 litres per day, I'd probably rather spend money on CDs than buy more water, as the marginal utility is zero.
[1] http://bigthink.com/re-envision-toyota-blog/will-the-next-wa...
Thankfully, I had an option at he didn't have, which was punt to the bike shop and pay them 12 bucks to get the thing out and chase the threads.
If I read the situation correctly, the motorcycle with this screw is certainly not valueless. It can be turned into a working motorcycle far more easily than most other things can be turned into a working motorcycle. If it would take a competent technician an hour to remove the screw, then the screw shouldn't affect the selling price of the motorcycle by more than a couple of hundred dollars.
It's important to remember that small, trivial-seeming things can actually be important, which I think is what he's pointing at. But it's also important to remember that a thing's potential has value beyond its current abilities.
Perhaps a bit with Chris, though, and maybe that is what you meant.
Back to the 'whole selling point' I think he was being overly dramatic, it's a novel after all. I think his point comes across better when he goes through the value traps part of the book, and interpret his point the following way:
Sometimes you are working on some machine (physical, like his motorcycle, or abstract, like software), and you get stuck on a problem due to a seemingly very meaningless part of said machine. I think his 'whole selling point' message is: when this happens, you need to reassess the value you give this part, as, until you get to resolve what it is causing it to get you stuck, its value to you is pretty much the value of the whole machine. Like how a crashing bug means that specific software is useless, in the specific use case that triggers the bug, until that is fixed. If it's some weird edge case, the software may be perfectly usable for most people, but if you are one of the few affected by it, the most likely few lines of code causing the defect render the whole thing useless, they're the selling point of the software to you individually.
Now, obviously, speaking of the actual physical motorcycle, it's not that he can't sell it without resolving the problem that particular screw is causing him. There are probably skilled mechanics with the right training and tools for which the screw would cause little to no problem. But to him: he can't ride it until that is resolved, so the screw is as important as the entire machine until he gets that resolved.
I faced this specific problem just a couple of days ago and remembering the book (which I read years ago) helped me step away from the problem and come back to it with a fresh angle. But the reality was the same: it's not that I would have lost my physical entity (a window, in this case). Surely, I could have called a professional carpenter to help me with it. But to me, without getting someone else involved, that little piece (it was also a screw, a rusty one) was worth the whole window.
One of the major themes of the book is defining "quality" and "value".
That is to say, without the screw, there is no motorcycle; without the motorcycle, there is no screw. In this concept, things cannot exist without being connected, dependent, and intertwined with one another. There is nothing that exists independently.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prat%C4%ABtyasamutp%C4%81da
I won't defend the book vigorously, but your reading of this part seems both superficial and easily dismissed with a moments thought. Pirsig is obviously driving at something deeper, even if you don't think he completely gets there.
It's a book about thinking and changing how you do it, after all. You can't expect to get much out of something like that if you can't or won't examine your own cognitive bias as you do.
If it can't fulfill this core function without the screw, it is valueless.
Of course, you can pawn the motorcycle for thousands of dollars, but for that, you would have to have a marketplace and buyers. You can also turn some parts into tools and probably repurpose the tyres into something useful.
But again, to do that, you would have to have the knowhow and the necessary tools and time for repurposing.
If you were in an isolated environment with no other people around and no additional tools, a motorcycle that doesn't function is as good as "valueless".
With that said, the motorcycle is clearly not value-less without the screw the same way it is not value-less without a rider.
The instant you dismount the motorcycle it is no longer physically capable of performing its function. Yet it of course still has value.
I don't think your comparison makes sense. A motorcycle is not broken without a rider; it is not being used to move from point A to point B, but it is capable of being used to move from point A to point B.
A broken motorcycle is not being used to move from point A to point B, however it is not capable of being used for that purpose. The broken motorcycle is clearly at a lower state than a functional motorcycle.
Perhaps a comparison that works would be (a broken motorcycle + a rider) is as worthless as (a working motorcycle + a broken/ignorant rider).
Neither can be used to move from point A to point B without the addition of their missing component.
If we assume I have the appropriate skills/training to successfully operate the motorcycle that is missing a rider can we not just as easily assume that I have the appropriate knowledge/materials to add the missing screw?
E: The point I'm trying to make is that it is the same scenario. We could argue over which assumption is more practical (how hard is to to find and install the screw vs ride a motorcycle) but that is a separate point.
The screw seems most important when it is the 'weak link'.
But the same is still true of all other components.
I guess Pirsig was making a point about value and not about potential value, which is leading to a larger point. In the moment, value is all you have. Potential value is a future value that requires time to realize.
I have two separate reactions to your suggestion that it's important to remember potential value, the Zen reaction and the Writer's reaction.
Even though Pirsig wasn't going for Buddhism, it's fairly consistent with Zen thinking to make observations about the momentary values of things. My Zen point is that the purpose of meditation and much of Buddhist practice is to see only value and to eliminate potential. When you learn about how to meditate, you learn how to stop your mind from thinking about the future and concentrate completely on the here and now. Remembering something's potential value is antithetical to this way of thinking. Not because it's untrue, but because it's un-now.
My writer's reaction is that while it will always be important to remember things other than the point the author was making. Is adding your point to the author's words helping us to understand his? If Pirsig reminded us about potential value in this sentence, would it improve this particular narrative? Does it open a path that gets to his larger point either more efficiently or more effectively? It might, that might be part of Pirsig's thesis. Or it might be taking a narrative path that doesn't lead to the same place.
It's important to see not just the value of the quote itself - the truth or completeness of an individual passage - but to also remember the potential value of the words as being the destination of the story -- where they lead and where it ends is as important as where it was at any given moment.
But I wish to make the case that the book is worth reading for its literary value alone. The narrative parts are a gentle, beautiful telling of this father/son trip across the northwest, and reading it will leave you with enjoying nature (or, more generally, reality) with something like a calm optimism.
I don't share these views, personally. But knowing a fair few philosophers myself, I think the Analytic school is powerful in the US. Dominated by figures like Bertrand Russell, who rely on a formal grammar and logical syntax. Philosophy is a science in this view and there's no room for narrative.
ZatAoMM falls into the Continental school and has more in common in its approach with figures like Nietzsche and Marx, relying on a narrative or historical approach. Neither of those particular figures, nor the Continental school in general, are much in vogue and thus I think Zen gets rejected for being both Continental and popular.
[1]:http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/16210395
EDIT: It's also frequently observed that Pirsig offers nothing new to philosophy. This is probably correct. I think the narrative aspect is what really separates the work. I found this while searching around a bit looking for further information, and it really sums up what I feel is ZatAoMM's greatest contribution:
'hat makes Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance superlative (and unique, to my knowledge) is that Pirsig successfully blended the history of philosophy with the history of his psyche, allegorizing each into the other." [2]
[2]:https://www.quora.com/What-do-philosophers-think-about-Zen-a...
These things happen :)
May he rest in peace.
We weren't allowed to read or do anything but sit in boredom during suspension (school rules) but he made an exception for me if I wanted to read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (at his recommendation).
I bought a copy and brought it to suspension the next day, read the whole thing that week. Good memories thanks to the room monitor dude and an excellent book.
Actually, learning how to code and learning Japanese changed my life in this regard.
I didn't know how to teach myself things until those two things happened, once I did, pretty much everything else opened up to me.
When I was in college, I finally had the chance to study it well and they had a great program. What I learned there taught me how to learn in general, which I then used to learn Computer Science, which opened up a bunch more for me.
A friend with an affluent upbringing was telling me about how his school would filter out anyone they wanted, and give them the option to either transfer out or be expelled. Usually this was done for kids who had hit other kids. I couldn't help but think "You were way luckier than you probably appreciate." I thought it was just a fact of life that when you go to school as a kid, you have to worry about being attacked. Not so, apparently.
I think I recall someone from the administration estimating that at least 10% of students were expelled before graduation. (At least I think it was 10% over the course of four years, not 10% every year.)
1. Monday in Dutch is maandag, which means 'moonday'
2. Friday in Dutch is vrijdag, which means 'free day' (and is pronouced 'freydag')
Obviously the French is lundi, but I never made the connection with lunar.
So for 28 years (4 year's worth of Moondays) of my life I never considered the connection between Sunday, Monday and Moonday.
Perhaps it's not scientific fact but actually learning another language fluently and seeing the differences was pretty freaking awesome to me.
There's other fascinating differences like the difference between 'Icing sugar' in English and 'Flour suger' in Dutch, one explains what you do with it vs the other explains what it resembles.
Perhaps it only challenges simple brains like mine.
It's also interesting to see how different languages give you different options. For example, Latin has infinitives that can inflect for tense and voice, so you can say "to have written" or "to be written" in single words, not just "to write". Portuguese lacks these, but has infinitives that can inflect for person and number, so you can say "for us to write" in a single word. English has neither! This is just scratching the surface of grammatical variation within closely related languages.
I think the controversy alluded to in this thread is that there is an old, fascinating theory that people think qualitatively differently when using different languages, or else that some languages are more effective at or conducive to thinking certain thoughts. (One form of this idea is called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, even though it's not clear that Sapir and Whorf understood it in exactly the same way.) There are many suggestive examples in support of this idea, but the strongest forms of the claim are in disrepute in the academic linguistics community.
The Sapir-Whorf sorts of issues are potentially rather different from saying that you'll understand language better by learning more languages, since they suggest even that you may understand the world as a whole differently.
I think it was the program (Ohio State has an excellent program) that provided me with the tools for this.
It came down to imitating successful patterns of speech and behavior (they called them core conversations), the heavy focus on proper intonation (more imitation, if your intonation is off, you're never going to make Japanese speakers comfortable listening to your speech) and the practice of spaced repetition (through flashcards, for learning kanji), which I had never been exposed to growing up.
For that last one, I'm actually in debt of my buddy who got me into the kanji flashcards.
I never truly "got" the trigonometry and geometry until I started going graphics programming. High school is too much theory and not enough application of the theory and experimentation.
Demonstrate it and you'll not only be rich but revered.
Keep in mind that detention was introduced after corporal punishment became socially unacceptable.
Evidence needed.
http://michaelyingling.com/random/calvin_and_hobbes/search.p...