Re: Baseball has been very, very good to me

From: Chris Taylor (Christopher.Taylor@man.ac.uk)
Date: Fri 16 May 2003 - 11:44:31 GMT

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    I'll take this in the spirit in which (I believe) it was performed...

    Reed Konsler wrote:
    >>There is...another information ...the performance
    >>of the teacher, recounting, as best she tries, the performance of the
    >>artifact of the book.
    >
    >
    > I don't understand what you mean by "the performance of the artifact of the
    > book". Is the book, itself, performing? What performance connects the
    > larger culture of baseball to the micro-culture on the island.
    >
    > Maybe this would be a better gedanken to help me understand you:
    >
    > Let's say that on an island called "First Base" they perform a game called
    > baseball. On another island called "Third Base" they don't play the game.
    > All the islands share the same language. An expedition from First Base
    > lands on an island called "Second Base" and, after a little exploring,
    > returns to First leaving behind a bunch of junk they don't need. Among this
    > junk is the rules of baseball.
    >
    > Lots of time passes. During this intervening period, people on First grow
    > tired of baseball. They stop playing, forget about it, and all records of
    > the game on First are lost.
    >
    > A little while later, an expedition from Third lands on Second and uncovers
    > evidence of the previous explorers. This includes the rules to baseball.
    > They return to Third and the game becomes identified with these mysterious
    > First Basers that no-one has ever seen nor heard from. It becomes a fad and
    > eventually everyone on Third is playing baseball all the time.
    >
    > The questions I have are:
    >
    > 1) What performance or performances allowed the game of baseball to
    > replicate?

    I think you have two possibilties:

    1) The environment was affected by the Firsts in a way that caused a behaviour in the thirds. Lke the way we all learn to use our limbs in approximately the same way, or drawing with charcoal on stone. The environment just makes some things more likely.

    2) The rules count as a record of a performance. Perhaps this would be more straightforwardly the answer if they left a video of the world series.

    Really though (2) is just a special case of (1).

    > 2) Where was the baseball meme when no one was playing baseball?

    In the purely environmental version of (1), the memeset may have disappeared completely, then a second different one comes along later on, selected for by the environment to be the same but while actually being completely separate from it (convergent evolution).

    Else it was just there, frozen. Preserved in the record of the performance of the rules (i.e. the rule book). But again I stress this is just a special case of (1) and therefore is not the same 'thing'. Performances are part of the other's environment and so are just another selective force to generate a copy (built of local stuff) of what you experience. The line is fuzzy though between that done ('live' if you like) by an actor, and that which occurred (maybe as the result of an actor's acts) due to the environment (i.e. were 'live' memes, or memes in suspended animation, involved). That rule book is close to the line, but I think I'd bag it with the World Series video, rather than putting it in with the charcoal and the rock face...

    Gedanken you very much :)

    Chris.

    >
    > Best,
    >
    > Reed
    >
    >
    > ===============================================================
    > 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
    > 

    -- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  Chris Taylor (chris@bioinf.man.ac.uk)
  http://bioinf.man.ac.uk/ »people»chris
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
===============================================================
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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