Re: FW: Grading Alternative

[Roger Key <roger.key@onet.co.uk>]

Hi All,

John E. Purchase wrote:

>Many alternatives have been proposed and
tried.   What I find intriguing is that the systems seem to return to the
short-cut symbols and their real, implied, and imagined meanings.   Is that
inertia, laziness, custom, or does grading actually have merit?<

I have no data, but I have some thoughts.

Gradings are easy and require little effort on behalf of the grader.
Gradings are suported by the current shared social paradigm and thus are
not easy to break from.  This could be explained by complexity and a couple
of the models held for it.  IF complexity can be moddeled as a fitness
landscape and grading is part of our fitness landscape and is attached to
an element that does not show much, or any flux, then we will be unable to
get anywhere in relation to grading apart from going up or down the hill
that is grading - we will not be able to cross the valley to another hill.
What will be needed is the complete distruction of the hill that grading is
so well attached to and trust that the new hill that emerges will be more
useful.  This is waiting for a purtubation in the fabric of the system, and
it may be  along wait!  An alternative would be on the basis of strange
attractors.  A similar scenario exists.  Gradings are the perfect outcome
for the system.  The system is centered around an attractor and whilst we
may cause parts of the system to fly some way from the SA, a bit like a
comet thrust into outer space we come whizzing back to the sun.  We have
never acheived escape velocity from a particulaly strong SA or set of SA's
that all deliver functionaly similay outcomes.  In the UK this is currently
being strengthened by the Government seeking to grade everything in the
belief that it will cause improvement.
Grading is so deep in our basic reality - hierachy, dominant males,
matriachs, ruling classes, meritocracy etc.  Hence grading does have merit,
it is as real for us as air and water and nearly as real as love.  I think
it will take a seismic impact on Western Society, and posibly human society
to break us out of the social paradigm that has grading as a bed rock.  But
keep chipping at the bed rock, some place it must be thin enough to get
through!

Roger C. Key
Prescient - The Whole as One
roger.key@onet.co.uk
(44) 01639 871062
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