RE: reply to Benzon

From: Richard Brodie (richard@brodietech.com)
Date: Wed 28 May 2003 - 01:41:16 GMT

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    Bill,

    It only took me two tries to find a paper that seemed to resonate with your point of view: http://www.des.ucdavis.edu/faculty/Richerson/CambMeme.PDF

    He claims memes aren't replicators because it is likely that the same phenotypic characteristic can be transmitted with a completely different mental rule in the recipient from the one used by the originator. I call that mutation. Clearly something is being transmitted, and it is likely that in several generations of transmission the set of internal rules (he uses the example of how to position the mouth to make the "pf" sound in the German word "apfel") will settle down to a small set.

    Richard Brodie www.memecentral.com

    -----Original Message----- From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk]On Behalf Of William Benzon Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2003 4:06 PM To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: reply to Benzon

    on 5/27/03 6:13 PM, Richard Brodie at richard@brodietech.com wrote:

    > Bill Benzon wrote:
    >
    > <<Darwinism is, first of all, about random variation and selective
    > retention.
    > Replication is secondary and didn't enter the picture until Watson and
    > Crick.
    >
    > There are computer models indicating that Darwinian evolution can happened
    > without high-fidelity replication.>>
    >
    > How can you have "retention" without copying and replication? Retention of
    > what?

    Retention of successful phenotypic characteristics.

    >
    > What do you mean by "high-fidelity"? Without sufficient fidelity, how is
    > evolution different from randomness?

    We're talking about fidelity in the replication of genetic units. Unfortunately, I don't have citations readily at hand. I believe the work was done by Peter Richerson or one of his students. He's got a website packed with pubs; you should be able to find it by googling his name.

    BB

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