Re: electric meme bombs

From: Wade T.Smith (wade_smith@harvard.edu)
Date: Wed 16 Oct 2002 - 22:25:19 GMT

  • Next message: Wade T.Smith: "Re: electric meme bombs"

    On Wednesday, October 16, 2002, at 04:57 , joedees@bellsouth.net wrote:

    > Which is why the neural excitation pattern that accommodates the
    > performance of a certain behavior is memetically equivalent to the
    > neural excitation pattern that an observer internalizes, that allows
    > them
    > to later perform a recognizably similar behavior (as two tokens of a
    > type), in spite of the fact that the neural excitation patterns are
    > arranged
    > somewhat differently in each brain; what matters is that their
    > interactions with their specific cortical environments facilitates the
    > performance of the selfsame (or similar enough to be replicative)
    > communicative behavior, and this is why they are memes (and not
    > performances of memes).

    Why do you insist upon forgetting the body? Your neural excitation pattern is also the pattern of the muscles and limbs moving, and that feedback to the brain- as you say "what matters is that their interactions with their specific cortical environments facilitates the performance." This is a required part of the meme, the fact that it is being performed by a body, and this is a required part of your neural patterns, the fact that the body is in motion.

    There is a great deal of information, required information, coming from the body during an action, and, unless this action is performed, all mental rehearsal is just that, mental rehearsal. No performance, no washee.

    And, the meme _is_ the performance. There are no performances of memes.

    There are performances of songs, of course, and you did one, allegedly, but you did not do this memetically, in that no-one heard, saw, or otherwise perceived your behavior. All we know is your account.

    > And in my opinion, its adoption leads to self-contradictions and gaping
    > holes - which is why I eschew it.

    The gaping hole in the mental model is that no living brain sits in a glass jar. And, no real mechanism, either to study, or to analyze, is yet apparent in the mental model, other than the hand-waving of
    'meme-ory', and, so far, we cannot do an fMRI on a body in motion. It is simply a multiplication of entities to demand a meme in a brain. The brain has enough to do without being bothered by memes. The factory cannot produce a car sitting idle, indeed it does not have to produce a car at all to still be a factory, but when it does, it does so in the activity of doing so, constantly being checked, as you constantly checked your voice for pitch and tempo (at least, I hope you did, just in case someone, somewhere, with some musical acumen, was listening), and, with every check, windows aligned, wires intact, the car takes shape. But it is only a car upon ejection from the factory. Until then, it was a work in progress.

    And a meme is not a work in progress. It is the work, the performance, itself.

    Only then can it actually affect something. Only then can it fly.

    - Wade

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