From: Richard Brodie (richard@brodietech.com)
Date: Mon 16 Jun 2003 - 15:41:40 GMT
Wade,
You've provided several examples illustrating that behavior is an integral
part of culture. No one disputes that. I still have no idea what you mean by
"performance model."
Richard Brodie
www.memecentral.com
-----Original Message-----
From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk]On Behalf
Of Wade T. Smith
Sent: Monday, June 16, 2003 7:51 AM
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: more how
Hi Richard-
I suppose a more simple and decidedly shorter example would be, keeping
with the baseball example, the introduction of a new bat. (This is, in
Lawry's memetic engineering jargon, 'introducing' a meme. Such
introduction is, of course, a performance. Such performance, is, of
course, not the idea of the introduction, or a thought or set of
thoughts about the introduction, but an actual physical motion within
physical expectations before a carefully organized set of observers.
Such 'engineering' is a highly controlled set of parametric behaviors,
not the idea itself. The idea itself (motivating the performance and
then inferred by the observer) is only one of a near infinite set of
possible meanings of the performance, but the more constrained the
parameters of performance and observation, the more possible the
expected meaning will be inferred, and then utilized with attempted
communicative expectation of understanding in following performances.)
Presently we have several baseball venues operating different
sub-species of the game. There is professional baseball, the National
and the American Leagues, and their farm teams. There is college
baseball. Olympic baseball. Little League. Sand lot. Island.... Here in
Boston we have the Park League, a semi-professional organization that
I've spent many a wonderful summer night watching. (Note to remind
myself to start going to Park League games again.)
But each venue has a separate set of rules, although not so different
that anyone observing the games would not call all of them baseball.
But, the infield fly rule, the designated hitter, where the umpire
stands, the foul lines, the base path length, the pitcher's mound, the
distances of the outfields- all these things effect the game, and all
these things are part of the venue.
The parks are different. The foul lines are different. Various and
sundry aspects of the venue are different, and effect play to varying
degrees, but one game of baseball cannot be played twice, even with the
same players, the same park, and the same ball and the same audience.
This is not a function of culture, but a function of nature. Two
identical things do not happen in space over time. The cultural venue
is what supplies the continuity and expectation of such continuity of
performance.
And, some things are more controlled parametrically in 'orthodox'
venues. While Little League and college and Olympic baseball all are
allowed to use aluminum bats, professional baseball forbids it. This is
the function of rules in general, prohibiting unique agents in the
venue, and maintaining constancy. As we know, there are specific rules
for the manufacture of bats used in professional baseball. All rules
are parameters, and changing the rules is one way to effect a change in
performance.
And, changing the rules, either through committee decision or through
reaction to individual idiosyncracy, regardless of motivating agencies
active in the individual agent (a stumble on the base paths might lead
to a change in the rule about base height, or a disputed call might
lead to an amendment) requires some performance in the first place to
effect play within the venue or even the venue itself.
(I suppose spoonerisms would be an obvious example from the english
language venue, although I'm sure such things exist in other languages,
but I am not privy to other language venues. Not only does someone have
to mistakenly stumble with their tongue to perform one, but someone has
to hear it, and then repeat it, or another person had to do a similar
thing while being observed, to continue it. Get enough of 'em gathered
in one spot, and some comic will be using constructed ones in his act.
What started the whole thing was a performance of a mistake, and
someone named Spooner was known to make such mistakes. To stay with
baseball, one only needs Yogi Berra, from whence 'yogi-isms' have
sprung.)
No one interested in altering the baseball venue by the introduction of
a new bat, regardless of how long or carefully or studiously they
arrived at their design or their decision, can have any effect upon the
venue of baseball unless and until they actually manufacture such a bat
and let the game proceed while using it. The actual activity of using
the bat is a requirement of cultural evolution in this single,
adamantly necessary, example.
No one interested in altering the cultural venue by the introduction of
a new meme, regardless of how long or carefully or studiously they
arrived at their design or their decision, can have any effect upon the
venue of culture unless and until they actually perform and let the
venue proceed while using it. The actual activity of performing is a
requirement of cultural evolution in this single, adamantly necessary,
explanation.
There is _no_ example of cultural evolution without performance. (Is
not culture itself a series of performances?) And yet there are
countless examples of brains, all supposedly with memes in them by the
memeinthemind model, without any effect upon culture, as Ray so
markedly demanded. The performance model can only find ineffectual
agents of cultural evolution lying, with perfect empiricism, in museums.
And, likewise, there are no birthdays to be celebrated without the long
history of cultural performances related to measurement of the year,
proclamation of individual status, and calendar convention, not to
mention the systems of counting and language specific within the large
cultural venue that demands birthdays.
Want to change someone's birthday? You have to change the calendar. The
actual time of birth never changes, but the markers of it are
culturally arbitrary. It is only through performance that culture
changes.
- Wade
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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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