Re: electric meme bombs

From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Wed 16 Oct 2002 - 21:28:29 GMT

  • Next message: joedees@bellsouth.net: "Re: electric meme bombs"

    >
    > On Wednesday, October 16, 2002, at 02:56 , joedees@bellsouth.net
    > wrote:
    >
    > > It is the only possible commonality between multiple performances of
    > > the same behavior by a single individual.
    >
    > Repetition is not dependent upon latency.
    >
    > Twitches are multiple performances of the same behavior. So are
    > habits. We have already dismissed these from memetic behaviors.
    >
    But intentionally undertaken and specifically meaningful behaviors are precisely memetic, and precisel;y the kinds of behaviors that require the previous internalization of a neuronal excitation pattern. I would also argue that many habitual behaviors are just cases of memes being internalized to the degree that they become second nature.
    >
    > Besides... there is no such thing as identical performances. Song1 is
    > not Song2. This is the very essence of cultural change.
    >
    Tree(1) is not tree (2), but they are both tokens of the type. You go from splitting hairs to splitting the atoms within them, in a vain attempt to enforce a doctrine of universal difference in the face of obvious and ubiquitous token/type class set similarity.
    >
    > Memes do not evolve, they are each unique performances, utilizing
    > similar and preponderant preparations.
    >
    Wrong. The memetic performance of the song 'She's So Fine" subconsciously mutated in George Harrison's brain into the recognizable similar "My Sweet Lord", a plagiaristic transgression for which he was forced to pay mucho bucks. The same thing happened, this time consciously, when Ray parker' Jr. stole the hook from Huey Lewis and the news' song 'I Wanna New Drug" and incorporated into the "Gostbuster" theme. The courts forced ray to pony up, too.
    >
    > Each car from a factory is unique, but, because the factory is made to
    > produce a near identical artifact, each one gets the same name, i.e.
    > Cadillac Eldorado, and is recognized as such, but you would not drive
    > another's. The commonality between them is the factory. Memes are
    > behaviors produced by memeplexes (factories), in our case humans
    > within a shared culture behaving.
    >
    No, there are no such things as humans; we give certain entities that name, but they are all unique beings. Even identical siblings are not strictly speaking identical, since each is in individual creation and they are spatiotemporally unique. And what would be for one of them an instance of 'behaving' might well be an instance of something else for any others that we mislabel as members of the Human class (since they're sooooo unique!). In fact, we might as well jettison language altogether, as it functions by subserving classes, and now, according to the received behaviorist wisdom of Wade, we recognize that in a universe with nothing besides a whole plethora of sets each containing one member only, that such a classifying system cannot help but lead us into egregious error.

    OMMMMMMMM!
    >
    > - Wade
    >
    >
    > ===============================================================
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    >

    =============================================================== 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



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