Re: reading a book

From: Kate Distin (memes@distin.co.uk)
Date: Thu 28 Apr 2005 - 07:03:29 GMT

  • Next message: Kate Distin: "Re: reading a book"

    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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