From: Chris Taylor (christ@ebi.ac.uk)
Date: Thu 02 Dec 2004 - 23:17:08 GMT
Omg we've gone all 'meta'...
What do you call the theory that someone can have a theory about your
theory of mind? Quis custodiet ipsos custodies yadda yadda.
Incidentally the 'engineering' is just more blind selection in the end.
We're trying to alter direction, yes; but driven by what? Our internal
environments are just yet more memes (in a broader definition) affected
and effecting, jostling and hybridising.
Cheers, Chris.
Keo Ormsby wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Keith Henson" <hkhenson@rogers.com>
>
>>At 11:56 AM 01/12/04 +0000, you wrote:
>>
>>>Dear memetics discussants,
>>>
>>>Please can I remind you that this list is for the discussion
>
> of matters
>
>>>relating to memes and memetics. Where this degenerates into
>
> discussions
>
>>>about politics (USA, Cuba, Israel, Animal rights etc.) this
>
> should be
>
>>>carried on OFF this list (i.e. privately or via another
>
> forum).
>
>>>Individuals who ignore this will eventually (after warnings,
>
> pleas etc.)
>
>>>be ejected form the list. If there is a widespread
>
> irrelevance the list
>
>>>will be closed. You have been warned.
>>>
>>>As they say: we thank you for your cooperation in this matter.
>>
>>Have I been missing a lot of postings? The previous post was
>
> over two
>
>>weeks ago.
>>
>>As for the above topics, I do think people should be more
>
> specific about
>
>>tying such topics back into memetics and evolutionary
>
> psychology. EP seems
>
>>to me to be the lower strata that memetics rests on.
>>
>>Why for example do animal rights memes spread in populations?
>
> They
>
>>obviously don't spread in *all* populations and didn't at all
>
> until recent
>
>>historical times so what are the differences? And how does the
>>differential spread of animal rights memes relate to the
>
> substrate of
>
>>evolved human brains? It is almost certainly a side effect of
>
> something
>
>>else since animal rights memes would be rather counter survival
>
> to hunter
>
>>gatherers, but a side effect of what?
>>
>>I have some ideas along this line. Anyone else?
>>
>>Keith Henson
>>
>>PS. Politics is even more related. If the psychological
>
> forces spreading
>
>>memes inside the US and Iraq were understood at least we might
>
> be able to
>
>>suggest something useful.
>>
>
>
> Perhaps we could analyze the memetic relevance of this whole
> situation. The list is a meme space where competition and
> selection is taking place, and the more successful memes get
> replicated and thrive in threads. Now this particular list has
> the following selective pressures: All of the replicating agents
> (us) have an interest in memetics, so memes in posts with memetic
> topics will have a better chance of generating a thread; and also
> there is an imposed constraint that the posts should talk about
> memetics, if not the replicating agent is eliminated. This sort
> of guarantees that memetics stays as the main topic of posts.
> However we, the replicating agents, are also interested in many
> other subjects in common, such as politics. So when another topic
> pops up, there is a certain chance that it can catch on, which
> happens sometimes.
>
> So in my view, what we are seeing here is a case of memetic
> engineering vs. memetic evolution. On the one hand, the list is
> trying to evolve by incorporating successful memes, whatever
> their topic, and on the other we (acting now as engineers, and
> not as replicating agents) are trying to keep it on a certain
> course lest it loose its purpose, namely to discuss memetics.
>
> I will not get into if Bruce Edmonds' comments were warranted or
> not in this particular instance, but we should all be aware that
> letting evolution do its stuff yields fascinating and marvelous
> new organisms (or memeplexes), but that the result is utterly
> unpredictable. If we have a certain purpose for our creation, it
> will be inevitable that once in a while we will have to roll up
> our sleeves and mess consciously with the course that it is
> taking.
>
>
> Keo Ormsby
>
>
> ===============================================================
> 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
>
>
-- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Chris Taylor (christ@ebi.ac.uk) HUPO PSI: GPS -- psidev.sf.net ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ =============================================================== 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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