From: Wade T. Smith (wade.t.smith@verizon.net)
Date: Wed 18 Jun 2003 - 11:47:45 GMT
On Tuesday, June 17, 2003, at 11:55 PM, Lawrence wrote:
> 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?
Yes.
Of course, regardless of congruence with any way of thinking, no
memetic model has shown much of any predictive ability. But the
performance's model's agent of the venue does more than any
memeinthemind's model of self-replicating ideas. It is the venue that
offers the most stable region of allowance for a performance, and thus
the highest level of near-identical replication. The memeinthemind
models still prefer to think in terms of 'same but different', which,
to me, is not logically acceptable, just as much as it is impossible in
nature.
- Wade
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