Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id IAA06922 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 12 Jan 2001 08:43:49 GMT Message-ID: <A4400389479FD3118C9400508B0FF230010D1A19@DELTA.newhouse.akzonobel.nl> From: "Gatherer, D. (Derek)" <D.Gatherer@organon.nhe.akzonobel.nl> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: DNA Culture .... Trivia? Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 09:39:21 +0100 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
I'm still waiting for examples of the 'powerful results' you promised, Mark.
You claimed I couldn't do empirical work. I showed you I could. Let's have
some reciprocity. Meanwhile.......
Mark:
[Derek claims that behaviourist, non-neural memetics] saves time by ignoring
what might be a dead end.....If [this argument] was followed, 'save
time,' very little new science would be produced.
Derek:
My point is more emphatic that that. I don't mean it _might_ be a dead end.
I mean it must surely be a dead end, on any reasoned consideration of the
evidence. Scientists have career decisions to make like everybody else.
It's not noble to waste one's life chasing a highly improbable theory. In
the end it's just a sad waste of talent. Working scientists have to eschew
such romanticism.
You say you aren't implying a '1 brainpattern = 1 behaviour model'. Good,
I'm glad that's cleared up. But that still doesn't allow you to say 'it's
just like genetics'. On the whole in genetics 1 gene _does_ equal 1 enzyme.
You make a great deal out of the fact that genes are not beads on a string,
that DNA is a continuum etc. But you're failing to see the wood for the
trees. Just because a gene can have 14 allelic variants, 6 alternative
splices and post-transcriptional RNA editing (say), does not mean that the
relationship between that gene and its protein product breaks down. There
is a hard sense in which the SST2 gene (for example), even though it is a
fuzzy-bordered linear string of tokens, does produce the SST2 protein, or
that group of related protein variants that we recognise as SST2 proteins.
Even if there are actually some 15 minor variants of that protein, and some
not so minor, you have misunderstood genetics when you claim that "Thus, in
genetics, there is no hard and fast '1 chemical product to 1 DNA pattern'
rule." It's harder and faster than you think. As I said yesterday, trust
me I'm a geneticist. I've been in this game a horribly long time. You're
picking up the wrong end of the stick.
It's several orders of magnitude harder and faster than what you seem to be
advancing for the relationship between your 'neural genotype' memes and your
'meme phenotype' behaviour.
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