Re: Giving a presentation on memetics

From: Chris Taylor (chris.taylor@ebi.ac.uk)
Date: Sat 26 Nov 2005 - 23:24:59 GMT

  • Next message: Kate Distin: "Re: Giving a presentation on memetics"

    If there is a small enough group, maybe you could try out the suggested experiment of Dennet's where you place posters with particular words on around the place and then see if those words crop up more than average (in speech, or maybe in a short writing sample, but actually this is getting a bit elaborate now). Actually forget I mentioned it.

    You could maybe do something visual with warning colouration and modern signage? Religion is a good example; Noah vs Gilgamesh; Zoroastrianism as the source of the good:evil dichotomy.

    And then there's the neighbours accent where you go up at the end of a question, other media stuff. Ray's mail was better.

    Hang on, if you want to address 'internal memes' as parts of a model of the world (learned 'chunks' of experience) you can get them to think about how this might work:

    ------------------------------------------

    "Reibadailty" New Scientist vol 162 issue 2188 - 29 May 1999, page 55

    You report that reversing 50-millisecond segments of recorded sound does not greatly affect listeners' ability to understand speech (In Brief, 1 May, p 27). This reminds me of my PhD at Nottingham University (1976), which showed that randomising letters in the middle of words had little or no effect on the ability of skilled readers to understand the text. Indeed one rapid reader noticed only four or five errors in an A4 page of muddled text.

    This is easy to denmtrasote. In a puiltacibon of New Scnieitst you could ramdinose all the letetrs, keipeng the first two and last two the same, and reibadailty would hadrly be aftcfeed. My ansaylis did not come to much beucase the thoery at the time was for shape and senqeuce retigcionon. Saberi's work sugsegts we may have some pofrweul palrlael prsooscers at work. The resaon for this is suerly that idnetiyfing coentnt by paarllel prseocsing speeds up regnicoiton. We only need the first and last two letetrs to spot chganes in meniang.

    This was not easy to type!

    Graham Rawlinson Aldershot, Hampshire

    ------------------------------------------

    Cheers, Chris.

    Ray Recchia wrote:
    > Depending on the size of the group maybe you could try the copying
    > experiment to demonstrate differences in transmission
    >
    > 1) Whisper a short sentence in the ear of one student, have them repeat
    > to the another and pass it around. Have the last person repeat what the
    > sentence has become
    >
    > 2) Draw a series of random squiggles, give it to the first student, have
    > him copy it, pass to the next student, have that student copy it
    >
    > 3) Draw a star, repeat
    >
    > The star should come out the most accurate, because it is stored as a
    > concept, and because it is being transmitted through a permanent medium.
    >
    >
    >
    >
    > At 12:23 PM 11/26/2005, you wrote:
    >
    >> Hi all,
    >>
    >> I'm an undergraduate University student in Derby, England. As part of
    >> my coursework for the Philosophy of AI module I am studying, I am
    >> giving a presentation on memetics, which is an area of great interest
    >> to me.
    >>
    >> The presentation is to a group of students who don't have the first
    >> idea about memes, so I have to keep it basic. I'll be talking about
    >> Dawkins's introduction of the concept, giving views from various
    >> people including Blackmore, Dennett and Kate Distin, and giving
    >> viewpoints opposing the theory (Steven Rose, Mary Midgeley).
    >>
    >> I was wondering if anyone had any ideas on how I could jazz-up this
    >> presentation, in order to put the topic across in a novel way?
    >>
    >> For example, I had thought of playing one of those annoying mobile
    >> ringtones at the start in order to demonstrate a clear example of what
    >> a meme could be. However, I'm after something a bit more novel -
    >> something that will really add sparkle to the talk.
    >>
    >> Does anyone have any ideas? Or any advice about the talk in general?
    >>
    >> Ben
    >>
    >> ===============================================================
    >> 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
    >
    >
    >
    > ===============================================================
    > 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@ebi.ac.uk
      http://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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