From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Mon 23 Dec 2002 - 00:55:51 GMT
>
> All I can gather from this piece of writing (which I have a great deal
> of difficulty understanding) is that you have some proof that people
> perceive and act on the world differently because of the uniqueness of
> their position, but that their actions and perceptions fall within
> certain ranges because of the advantages of being able to understand
> the perceptions and actions of others.
>
> Perhaps the difficulties I have in comprehension are because of my
> lack of familiarity with the philosophical style of writing and my own
> lack of intelligence, but I'm also reminded of the position taken by
> Agner Fog that obscurity is encouraged in certain social sciences
> because it makes arguments more difficult to refute.
>
> From what I do I understand I might suggest that the
> multi-dimensional
> fitness landscape provides a better model than the simple bell shaped
> curve. The fitness landscape model treats fitness as one dimension
> and each possible characteristic as another. To the extent that
> difference can be called 'adjectival' if might fit in well with
> Manfred Eigen's concept of 'quasi-species' where a constant influx of
> variation ensures that a population clusters in the area of a peak
> without its members actually sitting atop that peak. Perhaps
> differences are 'adjectival' when they are such that they don't cause
> individuals to actually leave the slope. When such differences aren't
> adjectival they cross the 'error catastrophe threshold' which
> prevents a fitter peak from becoming prevalent within a population.
>
> Your essay also brings to mind another point when you discuss the need
> of individuals to develop common perceptions to build on, and that is
> the notion of a fitness peak within the memetic realm becoming fitter
> because in certain cases common usage creates fitness. Where a meme is
> a tool, having the tool be the same for everyone, where there would be
> a fitness cost associated with learning how to use a different tool
> every time. A tool with less than maximal absolute fitness can become
> have a greater fitness because of its common use.
>
When perusing whether and to what degree an existent such as a behavior
or belief facilitates or hinders niche occupation in a spectrum of variable
environments (and the prevalence and concommitant social benefit or
superfluity of a particular behavior or belief is part and parcel of the
memetic environment), a fitness landscape is indeed a better
representation, but when simply perusing the spectrum of occurrence of a
particular existent, such as manifestation of a particular behavior pattern or
belief in a certain concept, where some percentage is likely to manifest
such a behavior or hold such a concept more than others and less than still
others, the Bell curve is the most Occamically efficient faithful
representation of such a statistical spread.
>
> Ray Recchia
>
>
> ===============================================================
> 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
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