From: Scott Chase (ecphoric@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed 09 Jul 2003 - 02:56:21 GMT
OK this is a tad tongue in cheek, but has some serious importance still. If
we take memetics as an outgrowth of the replicator versus vehicle dichotomy
in that humans (like other organisms ) are mortal evolutionary vehicles
carrying immortal coil replicators then we might want to consider whether
there are actual mental replicators that can be deemed memes. If memory is
the motor of cultural evolution we might want to ponder whether memories are
replicated or recreated, meaning passed relatively unchanged and copied with
fidelity in most instances both within heads and between heads or recreated,
IOW formed anew each time drawing upon resources not so well stored in the
psyche and transmitted with not so good level of fidelity. Maybe my
dichotomy of replication and recreation sucks at present (as tied to
reconstructing a scene such as forensics deals with as it is), but if this
dichotomy is valid and recreation supercedes replication as a way of viewing
memory being the motor of cultural evolution, then using an apt twist on the
replicator/vehicle dichotomy, we humans may instead be recreational vehicles
(RV's). I've thought of the possibility that this pondering of mine is akin
to dumping "black water" (waste products from the RV's lavatory holding
tank) in this internet based intellectual RV park, but that too would be
ample support for the point I've tried to bring across as I'm not
replicating memories passed to me from others, but recreating them based on
my vague recollections of source materials and how these source materials
have left an impression on me over the years. A true replication event would
have been much more lucid and scholarly, but how scholarly and replicative
are everyday conversations, which may be the meat of cultural evolution?
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