From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Tue 01 Jul 2003 - 02:47:24 GMT
At 03:18 PM 30/06/03 -0500, joe wrote:
chomp
>A person could go to a library to write and be writing a scientific
>treatise, a suicide note, a love letter, or a pornographic poem, just as
>the same person could do on a sunlit grassy hillside. WHAT is being
>written, the MESSAGE that is being ENCODED, is the meme. Once
>one learns how to speak or write, and memorizes a sufficient
>vocabulary, an indefinite number of memes may be communicated via
>the common code. Memetics is an irreduceably SEMANTIC enterprize,
>inextricably intertwined with signification. Memes have individual
>communicable MEANINGS; otherwise they could not compete with one
>another for replication in a cognitive environment, for they would be
>indistinguishable.
I mostly agree with you. You are making the point that it is the
information that comprises the meme. I also fully agree with you about
meaning being important in meme survival and propagation. But a meme does
not *have* to be expressed in words, though generally it can be.
As an example, consider a song with no words. Or skills which may not be
described in words such as making clay pots, or shoes or chipped rocks.
Keith Henson
PS. I would not make too big a deal out of arguing here. Most of the
large number of web sites are rather close to your expression of what is a
meme. The noise is mostly because people get off on the attention of
having someone respond to their silly postings.
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