Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id XAA03538 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 26 Feb 2002 23:53:17 GMT X-WebMail-UserID: rmey4892 Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 18:46:16 -0500 From: rmey4892 <rmey4892@postoffice.uri.edu> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk X-EXP32-SerialNo: 00002288 Message-ID: <3C9A1522@iit1s21> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: WebMail (Hydra) SMTP v3.61.07 Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Steve
>I am very ignorant regarding biology, but i thought speciation occured when
>two creatures could no longer 'get it together' ie the offspring of the
>union either is sterile or spontaneously aborts. With memetics, this
>division is far more fluid, and doesn't necessarily represent the true
>picture when cultures and languages interact.
The biological species concept is what you speak of and it is very useful for
genetics. It is utterly worthless for memetics, except only when you want to
see the effects of memes on genes. I prefer to focus on the memes themselves
and forget about the genes since they are both seperate and independent
information systems with only minimal overlap.
>If we push the biological analogy, which i am not always too keen on, then
>if we had memetic species then there would be no point of contact except as
>hunter , prey, or indifference (ie neither food nor hunter).
not sure I understood the second part of that answer? but as for the biology
analogy I think it is a perfect one, and far superior to the virus analogy.
Point of contact? tribes communicate with each other....but if it is below
some threshold and they differ significantly in their memetic composition (my
kingdom for a memetic code to prove me right!!!!!! Somebody Watson and Crick
me!!!) then they are memetic species. as for hunter and prey there are some
interesting readings out there about the Maoris of New Zealand and other
cannabalistic tribes. I think I read it in Jared Diamonds "Guns Germs and
Steel" that it was generally a pacific Islander response to protein deficient
diets???? anyone can corrwect me on that if you like.
>Except of course that we don't because for us they weren't too useful, or we
>would.
If every selection pressure that ever occured on any living organism were
reversed then time would in essence move backwards reducing us all to
primordial slime. you with me? In fact it would remove us all from this earth
living only the common progenitor of all living things. This progenitor would
then be subject to some "forward" evolution with an endpoint of some of his
ancestors having prehensile tails or long necks. In fact it can be said, if
you don't mind me saying that your mother is primordial ooze, that we all have
close cousins that have prehensile tails and long necks, and they find very
good uses for them.(I'm sorry I dragged your mother and cousins into
this....I'll refrain in the future)
>If you wished to live in times of scarcity you would let some one else try
>first. When you are very hungry the temptation is eat! Memetically you would
>copy someone else. Let them take the risk. Of course with scarce resource if
>they scoff first there may be nothing left for you.
If I saw something that appeared to be food I am sure I would try it using all
my senses and reason to ascertain if it was safe, or even desirable. If I knew
it was food and i was hungry I would of course eat, and probably try to beat
the other guy to it.
>A said earlier, if you want to use biological terms, what would be the
>equivalent for things that can still interact but are not seperate species.
let me tell you a little story about two birds that live in the northern
hemisphere. One bird is black, the other white. they cannot interbreed. but
the white bird has various neighbors it breeds with that are an off-white,
egg-shell, or gray (I can't recall specifics, just know that it is a gradation
of color). It is very interesting that if you follow these interbreeding
populations around the Artic circle you finally arrive at the black bird. now,
the black and white bird are considered seperate species but they do a fair
amount of "interacting". as for humans, if two humans who are not members of
seperate memetic species interact (sexually, socially, economically,
memetically (communication that is),politically, etc.) then thay, by
definition are the same species, since memetic differentiation has not
isolated them.
this is interesting if you've ever played the Kevin Bacon game. It also has
the effect of uniting almost the entire extant population of humans into one
memetic species, save those isolated tribes like the Inuit or Yanomamo. So how
useful is the term memetic species? not very, except to describe the current
state of the world as a fusion of ideas that were derived in memetic isolation
and the wars in the world less about genetic proliferation and more about
memetic domination (interesting side note here: George Bush has decided to
extinguish memes in a two-fold way. 1 destroy biological organisms that carry
said memes. 2 innundate the world with memes that show disdain for destruction
of biological organisms. methinks I smell circular reasoning.But I guess its
OK if I get to watch it all on TV (thinly veiled sarcasm....If I were G.W. I
would have taken the moral high ground))
Regards
Randy
P.S. oh yeah war is also about resource utilization. This is to ensure the
continued increase in a population of memetically homogenized individuals, all
striving to remove the barriers that memetic speciation created. In essence
hybridization is the new "name of the game".
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