The Demise of a Meme

From: Brent Silby (phil066@it.canterbury.ac.nz)
Date: Tue Mar 20 2001 - 23:59:55 GMT

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Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 11:59:55 +1200
From: Brent Silby <phil066@it.canterbury.ac.nz>
Subject: The Demise of a Meme
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    Richard wrote:"Memetic selection and purposive design are by no means mutually exclusive."

    I guess it depends on what you take "purposive design" to mean. If by "purposive design" you mean the evolution of ideas through the interaction with existing memes, then you could be right.

    My hesitation in using terminology like "design", "creative", "purposive" is that it sort of removes a feature of the human mind from the memetic equation. In doing this you end up with the following picture: on the one hand you have a bunch of memes that inhabit the mind -- or more precisely, build a mind. While on the other hand you have some part of the mind that is separate and can "direct" the activity of the memes.

    I prefer to think of the memetic process as self explanatory, not requiring the interference of a mind that is somehow removed from the equation.

    Brent.
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    Brent Silby 2001
    Memetics Research
    and Engineering Project

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      ----- Original Message -----
      From: Richard Brodie
      To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
      Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2001 11:22 AM
      Subject: RE: The Demise of a Meme

      Brent wrote:

       

      << Crafted? I'm not sure if that is the best word to use, as it implies purposive design. But, of course, scientific memes were not "designed", they are the result of natural memetic selection. It is accidental that science, or any other memeplex, is comprised of its collection of memes. It could have been a lot different -- in fact it has been during certain periods of history. Its just that science's current range of memes happen to be more successful self-replicators than some of their competing memes.>>

       

      Memetic selection and purposive design are by no means mutually exclusive.

       

       

      Richard Brodie richard@brodietech.com www.memecentral.com

       

       

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