From: Chris Taylor (chris.taylor@ebi.ac.uk)
Date: Thu 04 May 2006 - 15:30:21 GMT
Hiya. Long time no ill-informed commenting :D
So, to the point: It is a priori impossible to 'replicate' _any_
'meme'. There is no such thing as a meme per se, it is just a
useful approximation for (the result of) a patterning process.
As with all good evolutionary analyses, the real diagnostics are
generally in the peripheral, weakly-selected stuff; even if I
watch a hundred baseball games I will not get all the rules, but
I am _bound_ to get the hit-ball-with-stick-and-run bit. So is
it replicated or did I just construct a like thing? How complete
is it? This is convergence versus homology (the baseball example
being the former).
And on time signatures, 3/4 or 6/8? Impossible to determine in
some cases. 2/2 or 4/4? We can assume what the composer might
have gone for, given say a marching tune, but that is prey to
all the usual pitfalls of supposition.
So if we're just talking about generalities, then yes the
hitting a ball with a stick 'meme' can jump, sort of, but is
that a baseball meme? No. If we want to get detailed, then we
have to go with Kate -- an _ana_logous thing can be constructed,
and the more carefully the selection criteria are expressed
(rule books, examples, coaching) the closer the approximation,
but the baseball 'meme' most probably doesn't even exist.
Replication is a specific thing; what has been described is not
that -- it is the control of an environment such that it favours
convergent evolution.
Cheers, Chris.
Richard Brodie wrote:
> Kate wrote:
>
> << When we watch games and infer the rules by reflecting on what we're
> seeing, I don't think that the baseball meme *is* being imparted. Rather
> than being replicated, we're re-inventing it for ourselves, the basis of
> knowledge that we bring to the situation.>>
>
> If such reinventing is predictable then it is indeed (a very common form of)
> meme replication.
>
> <<Again - I think that the tune itself can come across either way, but the
> information underlying it (was that note a B flat or an A sharp? Is the
> music written in 3/4 time or 6/8 time? etc.) does not come across unless you
> have the music in front of you. You can reconstruct it for yourself by
> listening, but that isn't the same thing as replication.>>
>
> Sure it is. In fact, memes evolve to more stable forms precisely because of
> people's ability to reinvent information and fill in gaps.
>
> Richard Brodie
> www.memecentral.com
>
>
> ===============================================================
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>
-- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 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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