From: Lawrence DeBivort (debivort@umd5.umd.edu)
Date: Wed 18 Jun 2003 - 03:38:35 GMT
Hi, Scott --
"Replication" is a word that we now avoid using in our memetic research --
it caused confusion and didn't lead to the distinction that we needed. I
shared some of our thinking about replication and imitation in a posting of
a few days ago.... I am hoping to hear from Richard about his take on my
thoughts on the necessity of identicalness in dissemination.
We have also come to avoid the genetic analogy for the same reason, as I
tried to explain at least a year ago (to little avail on this list <smile>.
My hope here is not that we will all come to an agreement on definitions and
models, but that we might share some tidbit of information or thought that
may fit into someone else's work and help out. So, personally, I pick and
choose among the bits of views that are presented here, and with that and
other work my own body of understanding has grown and prospered.
Cheers,
Lawry
> From: Scott Chase
LdB: > >In our view of memetic dissemination, the replication need not, and
will
> >rarely be identical. Yet we call it memetic and this view seems to work
> >well
> >in our work.
> >
> >Why is dissemination nor identical? Because each person (or group of
> >people,
> >for we also think of memes as being able to disseminate to and through
> >groups) will have his own criteria for acceptance which may require some
> >modification of the meme prior to acceptance. So as they
> disseminate, memes
> >also tend to mutate. The 'power' of the meme lies in part in its
> ability to
> >withstand such mutation, i.e. to be accepted whole and as close to
> >identically by the recipient.
> >
> >Notwithstanding this lack of identical dissemination, prediction of
> >acceptance is possible, particularly if one can also model the acceptance
> >criteria of the recipient. Such modeling is possible, but we do not
> >consider
> >the methods for doing so to be part of the field of memetics.
> >
> >Does this fit with your thinking, Richard? Wade? Others?
> >
> >
Scott: I could be misreading him, in which case there's been no replication
> bewtween our minds, but itseems Richard is holding that
> replication implies
> identity, not similarity. He has written a book on memes so is an
> authority.
>
> The so-called "meme" of the "brain" is hardly identical between
> people. The
> people may spell brain the same, but what the word means to a trained
> neuroscientist is probably different than what it means to a cultural
> studies major or some swordfisherman from Cape Cod. The concept of
> "brain"probably varies for an individual through their lifetime, say from
> their first glance at a picture in a elememtary school textbookto perhaps
> what they learn in colege psych classes to late what hey may have long
> forgotten from these classes due to disuse.I fail to see anything
> sufficiently "selfsame" (obligatory Deesian lingo) across individuals or
> within indiviaduals to qualify as beng identitical. Similarity could be a
> stretch in itself.
>
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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
>
===============================================================
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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