Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id MAA29717 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 25 Jan 2001 12:16:19 GMT Message-ID: <3A701885.B577FF84@bioinf.man.ac.uk> Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 12:13:57 +0000 From: Chris Taylor <Christopher.Taylor@man.ac.uk> Organization: University of Manchester X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en-gb] (WinNT; U) X-Accept-Language: en,pdf To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: character assassination References: <F276Ci6nx8dyDd3OJXs0000414e@hotmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
If you want to go for it you have to say 'ack-uh-ruht' for accurate. Memetastic.
I loved the Saturday Night Live faked presidential debates (did you see the bit where
Dubya was listing members of African governments?).
We often reduce complex memic ecosystems (a real person) to a toy ecology of a small
number of characteristics. What I don't understand is why...
a) Good caricatures are so bloody funny
and in a related point
b) 'Small' versions of anything (even spiders) are cute.
Essentially, if something takes up less 'space' than we might expect, it gives us a
little buzz. Btw someone mentioned emotion a while back; for the record I think that
we should not try too hard to classify emotions as kinds of memes. Emotions are deep
animal brain stuff - tags for accumulated experiences which will never recombine to
reveal what is generic about the world, or generate 'novelty'. Memes are washing
about in an environment of which emotions are part. They can affect, and are affected
by that environment, but fear, contentment etc are like temperature or soil acidity
(I reckon).
As for funny, I think that's the hardest emotion of all. Surprise is the nearest to
it, either because a novel combination or behaviour has been observed, or a rule has
been broken (special case of a novel combination) or whatever (do we have any
comedians on the list?).
G'wan - slag me off cos this is old hat then...
[That classic response to selection thing with the H1|)|)3|V VV0R|)5 was ace
(although I've not quite got the hang of doing it yet...). I wonder if you can get
money to study this stuff - my ex-supervisor does some memetic modelling on the side
(some groovy results actually) but apart from being Dan Dennett's postdoc how the
hell would you manage it? Does anyone know of any biology departments that do
memetics?]
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Chris Taylor (chris@bioinf.man.ac.uk)
http://bioinf.man.ac.uk/ »people»chris
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