From: Scott Chase (ecphoric@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue 08 Jul 2003 - 04:01:50 GMT
>From: "Richard Brodie" <richard@brodietech.com>
>Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
>Subject: RE: Silent memes
>Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2003 17:23:08 -0700
>
>The fact that two different computer programs can print "hello world" does
>not lend credence to the notion that the printing caused the program rather
>than the other way around.
>
Yet the programs are indeed different and one might not look at these
programs and see isomorphy where one can abstract something out that can be
called a selfsame meme. Two different programs or the ideas that led to
these programs (programs being artifacts in their own right as they are
human creations on a disk somewhere perhaps on a PC with Microsoft or an
*evil* Apple Macintosh ;-) can lead to a similar (or selfsame?) outcome (the
printout).
Trying to arrive at the "hello world" outcome did cause these different
programs to be written by people. In a sense, the printout (the goal to be
achieved) did cause the programs via the mediation of human ingenuity.
Shifting gears a little, with people as individuals within a culture (versus
your computer example as these computers aren't learning from or exchanging
with each other in the process of creating a selfsame printout) we are
looking at efficacy, meaning which way the causal arrows point in reference
to a situation. This may become a nasty chicken and egg problem, but if it
is the behavior that is selfsame and the ideas which lead to this behavior
that differ, these ideas are not selfsame and one cannot easily argue for a
selfsame meme at the level of memory, but this selfsameness can possibly be
abstracted out at the level of behavior or something more externalized like
an artifact.
Looking at an artifact could cause differing ideations in two people, yet
given these differing ideations the two people could still produce a similar
reproduction (ectype) of the original object. The ideas will be more
different in each person than the objects they create using these ideas.
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk]On Behalf
>Of Scott Chase
>Sent: Monday, July 7, 2003 2:31 PM
>To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>Subject: RE: Silent memes
>
>
>
>
>
>
> >From: "Richard Brodie" <richard@brodietech.com>
> >Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> >To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
> >Subject: RE: Silent memes
> >Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2003 07:27:44 -0700
> >
> >Children and immigrants still possess language skills. I would love to
>see
> >the degree of correlation between possession of language skills and
> >transmission quality of "silent memes." It might be a difficult
>experiment
> >to set up though.
> >
> >As a kid I had the "Paper Airplane Book," a book of printed diagrams and
> >instructions for making a variety of airplanes.
> >
> >
>As a kid I received a model airplane kit for a present. The problem was
>that
>the instructions for building the model were printed in Japanese. Needless
>to say I hadn't a clue how to build the plane and the instructions were of
>little assistance.
>
>OTOH if a person who could only speak Japanese were to show me step by step
>how to build the plane just by performing the operations involved, I might
>have stood a better chance of building the model airplane in future
>attempts, even if the Japanese person's instruction involved non-verbal
>means.
>
>How I responded to the nonverbal cues may have differed from the
>instructor's original intent and my ideas related to putting the plane
>together may have differed as neurally stored, for instance my internal
>self-talk would be in English and theirs in Japanese and my relevant
>assocations dependent on my own personal history of model building.
>
>Two different neural encodings could bring about similar results, given
>that
>I was able to put the model together nearly identically to the instructor.
>
>The engrams (J-mnemons in the intructor's head and E-mnemons in mine) would
>not be "selfsame" on many levels, yet their behavioral outcomes could be,
>given that one could take a look at the J-plane and the E-plane and not see
>significant differences.
>
>This may lend some credence to Wade's "memesinmotion" model in that things
>are "selfsame" at the performance level, yet different at the mental level.
>
>OTOH, there could be counterinstances where the same mnemon in an actors
>head could lead to significantly different behavioral outcomes depending on
>the context within which the memory is elicited (ecphorized).
>
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>===============================================================
>This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
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>
>
>===============================================================
>This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
>Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
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>see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
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