From: Richard Brodie (richard@brodietech.com)
Date: Sun 19 Oct 2003 - 07:02:15 GMT
I agree with this analysis, Keith.
Richard Brodie
www.memecentral.com
> -----Original Message-----
> From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk
> [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Keith Henson
> Sent: Saturday, October 18, 2003 9:25 AM
> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Subject: RE: Online Paper: "Ideas are Not Replicators but
> Minds Are" by Liane Gabora
>
> At 10:00 AM 15/10/03 -0400, you wrote:
> >Thanks for posting this, Bruce.
> >
> >Gabora misses the key point about meme. She says: "An idea is not a
> >replicator because it does not consist of coded
> self-assembly instructions."
> >
> >To the contrary, ideas CAN have such instructions, and thus be
> >self-disseminating. Not all ideas do, and not all ideas are
> memes. But
> >some can and do, and to the extent that they have these instruction
> >sets, they are memes.
>
> Meme sets certainly can have "go preach me" as part of their
> content. But even ideas (memes) without explicit
> instructions to be copied are memes. Memes for making bags
> to carry food or memes for chipping out hand axes became part
> of the culture of early hominid culture because they were
> *useful.* I.e., those who had them were more likely to
> survive and teach such memes to their children. We can see
> the earliest stages of this in the varying cultures
> (technologies) of chimpanzee groups.
>
> To the extent any idea is passed between humans forming a
> persistent element of culture it is certainly a meme as
> defined by Dawkins and just as certainly a replicator. After
> culture (the meme stock of a group) because essential to
> survival, useless or even harmful memes could hijack the meme
> propagation channel and do well as parasites.
>
> By analogy, a *tiny* fraction of our genome is directly
> concerned with replicating DNA. In fact, well over 90% of it
> doesn't code for anything. Yet genes that are transcribed as
> well as chunks of DNA that don't are certainly "replicators."
> The difference is in evolutionary "loop closing." The bases
> pairs of a non coding piece of DNA drifts without the kind of
> selection you see in a gene such as the one that codes for
> cytochrome C--which has drifted very little in all the
> branches of life.
>
> >Further, I would not consider the mind a meme. I do view the 'mind'
> >(defined
> >broadly!) as the place where memes are received, held, used, and
> >modified, and from where memes are disseminated.
>
> Since I make the case that the information is the essence of
> a meme, I would add that minds are the places where memes
> have real world influence. A meme is still a meme in a book,
> but it has to be in a mind for that mind to direct a body to
> go out and flay infidels.
>
> >But the mind itself, while integral
> >to the process of memetic dissemination, is not a meme.
>
> I agree.
>
> Keith Henson
>
> >Lawrence de Bivort
> >The Memetic Group
>
>
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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
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