From: Chris Taylor (christ@ebi.ac.uk)
Date: Thu 07 Apr 2005 - 10:19:36 GMT
Hiya. Grants written and submitted :)
> I wonder why we couldn't ascribe more than
> one copy of the *same* meme to each individual.
This is Dennet's discrete-model analogy with crabgrass and bluegrass
(??) in his back yard (I'm struggling to remember the fiddly bits) isn't
it? I think this tallies nicely with the principle that the way design
gets done by blind, replication-plus-error-based evolutionary systems is
going to result in the same sorts of things; in this cas ecologies work
best as an analogy -- interspecific competition between species
consisting of many varied but similar enough to breed individuals.
But...
> If I'm trying to learn
> Gatherer's definition of the external meme, what
> happens each time I read his article in a different
> setting or say after I've previously read Benzon's
> article that Gatherer cites? Do I produce a new copy
> each time and have a redundancy of G-meme definitions
> stored in my synapses, each perhaps slightly different
> wrt the context in which I read it (ie - at the beach,
> at home, after reading Benzon, after reading Lynch
> etc...)? Or do I just have one copy (a G-meme meme)
> that is strengthened or modified each time? Do I have
> a copy of the G-meme or does it have me?
This is more the thing in reality imho, as we should not forget that
even though action potentials are more or less digital signals, that
neurons are so analog it defies belief; which (if any) is the major
influence? In an all-digital brain I'd think there may be lots of
copies; in an all-analog version, something more like the one-copy
argument (but perhaps not literally one) with the 'thing' being a fuzzy
beast whose existence is effectively _modelled by_ the many discrete
things approach (which means something, but I'm not quite sure what).
Was that vague enough for everyone? :)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chris Taylor (christ@ebi.ac.uk)
HUPO PSI: GPS -- psidev.sf.net
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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