From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Wed 16 Oct 2002 - 18:54:58 GMT
>
> On Wednesday, October 16, 2002, at 02:06 , joedees@bellsouth.net
> wrote:
>
> > In five minutes I shall sing "London Bridges". Anyone else can make
> > a similar decision regarding a ditty whose melody and lyrics they
> > know, that is, whose memetic structure they have internalized.
>
> Let me hear it, or it is not a meme.
>
I performed it to you by typing it in another post, but performed it for
myself behaviorally by singing it beforehand, and performed it mentally
by mentally rehearsing it even before that. If I could not have done the
last, the first two would also have been beyond me.
>
> (Besides, is that not 'London Bridge is Falling Down'? I don't know a
> song called 'London Bridges'. I know a song called 'London' (one of my
> alltime faves), and 'The Tricks of London' (not on my fave list), both
> by Steeleye Span. So, not only do you have to sing this song of yours
> _and_ let me hear it in some way, by realtime or artifactual
> transmission, but you need to do this because I have no reference
> whatsoever for this song of yours, and I cannot attempt to replicate a
> meme I have not seen, and have no reference for. You see the
> difficulty, I hope. I cannot sing your song- I cannot replicate your
> meme, because, not only have I not heard it, but I have no idea what
> it might even sound like. Totally without ground, this meme of yours,
> which means _you have to perform it_. You have no other choice, and
> the meme itself will not _be_ until you do.)
>
Nope. The song was sung in my presence, and the moment I accepted
memory of it and the possibility that I might wanna sing it in the future, I
was infected by the meme.
>
> Besides, you have no idea, really, what that song will actually sound
> like. Your voice might crack in the second verse. You might forget the
> words.
>
Intention is everything. This is why animals who are incapable of
meaning, that is, specific intention, cannot be memetically able. A
flatworm can be trained to jump when a light goes on in its cage,
indicating an electic shock will shortly travel through the cage floor, and
when these flatworms are ground up and fed to other untutored
flatworms, they jump also. You are placing the performance of a
Beethoven symphony, the solving of Fermat's Theorem, and the
conbstruction of a Cray computer, space shuttle or sunbomb on the
same stimulus - blank - response leve, and it simply doesn't wash.
>
> Haddock's Eyes.
>
> - Wade
>
>
> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
> For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
> see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
>
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed 16 Oct 2002 - 19:00:02 GMT