From: Grant Callaghan (grantc4@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed 16 Oct 2002 - 19:58:02 GMT
> >
> > (To continue a thought, you _do not_ know the song you are _about_ to
> > sing. You might have a very, very, good, idea what might happen, but,
> > you don't really _know_. If you can show, anywhere, for almost
> > anything, that full disclosure of the future is a fact, let me know.
> > Even a practiced opera singer, with years and years of training and
> > professional experience, cannot _know_ with completeness the
> > performance they are about to give.)
> >
>I just sang:
>
>"London Bridges Falling Down,
>Falling Down,
>Falling Down.
>London Bridges Falling Down
>My Fair Lady."
>
>I mentally rehearsed the tune and the words in my head five minutes
>before, and behaviorally executed the song just as I imagined doing.
>
>
>
> > There is no meme, as you yourself have said, without a meaning-capable
> > audience.
> >
>A person who watches his/her favority TV show at home alone is
>replicating the I-like-to-watch-my-tv-show meme, whether or not there is
>someone else in the room to witness the performance. A replication
>behavior does not have to be observed to exist, just as a tree falling in
>the forest still makes a sound. And neither does a mental encoding of
>the behavior have to be observed to exist, even though we can watch
>particular circuits light up on PET scans when certain behaviors, but not
>others, are engaged in.
> >
> > And, since there is no meme without an audience, there is no meme
> > without behavior.
> >
> > And the reason for that is, the meme _is_ the behavior.
> >
>The manifestation of the meme is the behavior; the latent meme is
>contained in meme-ory.
> >
> > - Wade
> >
The question here is not whether a meme is or isn't. The question is what
are we going to call things? At some point in time someone wrote a ditty
called London Bridge is falling down. Some of us are calling the creation
of that ditty in the mind of the creator a meme. Some are saying they will
only refer to it as a meme after he/she has passed it on to someone else.
Some say it is what was passed on that was the meme and everyone else who
sings or says or writes it is also passing on that same meme. To each
person who uses the word, "meme," to refer to what he/she has decided to
call a meme, it is a meme. To those who have decided something different,
it is not. But there is no meme outside of what we decide to call
something. If we decide to call it a beme, then for that person at that
moment, that's what it is. So arguing over what is and is not a meme is
futile and self defeating. What we have to decide is what part of our
experience are we going to refer to as memes. Outside of that, they don't
exist.
Grant
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