Re: memetics-digest V1 #1340

From: Wade T. Smith (wade.t.smith@verizon.net)
Date: Tue 13 May 2003 - 17:22:24 GMT

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    On Tuesday, May 13, 2003, at 12:44 PM, Grant wrote:

    > Maybe I'm wrong and these
    > media transmit nothing to anyone. Perhaps language itself doens not
    > transmit ideas from the mind of one person to another. If you think
    > so, I'd
    > say we live in different ideological universes.

    The different media transmit what they transmit. Unless you are saying that the satellite in geosynchronous orbit above the Earth is beaming things directly into your noggin (a la Philip K. Dick), then I have to remind you that each and every transmission requires a 'performer', in the form of a radio, or a TV, or a newspaper.... There is an entire realm of technology which you, and so many memesinthemind-information-absorbed others, so easily lose sight of or ignore entirely, and I've never known why. It all appears so tangible and obvious to me.

    I must live in a different ideological universe, because, again, since the media _do not_ transmit directly into our minds, that means that telepathy don't exist in mine, and 'mine' is only the natural universe. What possible hyperdimension do you inhabit?

    Ideas do not get 'transmitted' from one mind to another. Things get performed, and an observer infers.

    The success of the understanding can, possibly, be good enough that, when the observer performs, another observer infers they did the same thing.

    But nothing went from one mind to another.

    (Perhaps you quibble about 'mind' the ideological concept itself, and desire to go on and say the 'mind' is just another word for the exchange and performance of these inferences, at which point I will ask you to simplify and adopt the performance model of memetics to explore cultural evolution, and leave the minds to themselves.)

    - Wade

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