From: Kate Distin (memes@distin.co.uk)
Date: Thu 28 Apr 2005 - 07:03:29 GMT
Chris Taylor wrote:
> Sorry perhaps I wasn't clear -- the genetic engineering reference was
> just an analogy to illustrate my point that my imagination allows me to
> take parts of one memeplex and insert them into another in a way that I
> would never see in the real world; or indeed to construct a whole new
> thing from bits of others. No literal sense of the world of genetic
> engineering was supposed to be involved...
>
> Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Sandwiches at all. Works of fiction.
> Satellites. The Intel whisky still. Art (most of). Lamdba calculus.
> Carpeting. Guacamole. More or less everything we have constructed was at
> some point and to some degree imagined, unless it was somehow wholy
> discovered (maybe sharp flint edges were discovered, but what about axe
> handles -- did someone dream about having a third section to their arm
> to get a bigger whack with their sharp stone -- a fore-forearm -- and
> then saw a stick and thought "Hey now..."? How did the first axe heads
> get attached to the sticks?
>
> This was all I intended to provoke an examination of -- is the ability
> to deconstruct and recombine parts (in the most general conceptual
> sense) what we have that others don't (I mistyped others as otters just
> then lol); and is that a qualitatively different skill from the signs of
> intelligence for which there are much clearer origins in our near and
> distant relatives (like copying things as a whole entity, and learning
> from serendipitous discovery -- actually sea otters use a kind of blunt
> hand axe in a sense -- now if only they had decent thumbs)?
>
> Cheers, Chris.
>
Yes I think it is.
Kate
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