Re: meme as catalytic indexical 2nd try at posting

From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Thu 29 Jan 2004 - 15:38:48 GMT

  • Next message: Keith Henson: "Re: meme as catalytic indexical"

    At 06:23 AM 29/01/04 -0800, you wrote:
    >Keith
    >
    >please try a little bit of sounding like an academic
    >or a scientist

    Why should I? I am neither. I am a free speech advocate influenced by Robert Heinlein's libertarian viewpoint and an engineer who appreciates science. I have done a bit of popularizing of parts of it, but my main contributions (the observations in Sex Drugs and Cults) are on the level of a guy who fell in a cesspool and is reporting that shit stinks.

    >you believe or are of the opinion that the statement
    >is correct
    >
    >the attribution is the pdf Danny asked us to read

    Thanks. It wasn't clear.

    >copying fidelity has NOTHING to do with meaning
    >transmission

    We truly speak different languages. Because in *engineering* language if the copying fidelity of a transmission path gets too bad no meaning gets through at all. Someone could be telling me I won the lotto, but if all I hear on my cell phone is _SCRAWWWK_ the meaning failed in transmission because of poor fidelity.

    >if it did then signs could always be mapped in a
    >functional way to meaning -- as any semiotician would
    >tell you -- it just ain't so

    I have no idea how this statement connects with copying fidelity. Perhaps this exchange itself is an example that "signs [can't be] mapped in a functional way to meaning," at least not across this discipline gap. It demonstrates the utter divergence of sign (word) meaning between social science and engineering.

    Keith Henson

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