Re: Memes inside brain

From: salice (salice@gmx.net)
Date: Fri Oct 05 2001 - 17:49:09 BST

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    From: "salice" <salice@gmx.net>
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    Subject: Re: Memes inside brain
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    > Where have you been the last century? Do read "Remembering". You'll like
    > it. :-)

    Maybe i'm going to, if i remember the title correctly!

    > Please do not assume that imitation is copying, nor that imitation is
    > the only way that memes are reproduced.

    Uhm, i agree.
    Can you give me your view on how memes get reproduced tho?

    > Consider the complaint of the
    > young mother that she is treating her children in ways that her mother
    > treated her that she hates. This is a fairly clear case of memetic
    > inheritance, but there is no evidence of imitation.

    Well she imitates her mother even if she hates it. There's no reason
    that you have to like what you imitate. As i said before imitation of
    behaviour or meme-selection isn't always a conscious decision-based
    process.

    > First, ideas from genetics may be applied without sufficient reflection.

    Hm yes this is really dangerous. But i think there is a selection in
    the meme world too. And when you want to find out where and how this
    selection happens i think the brain is the most important selector
    to be observed.

    All people disagreeing with me couldn't give a different description
    of a different selection, where it happens and how.

    > Second, and to me more importantly, what is really going on with memetic
    > replication, selection, and variation is glossed over with insufficient
    > investigation. Both of these things will change with time, if memetics
    > continues to develop.

    There are a lot of things to be learned about how the brain works.
    But that memes get selected by the brain can be observed even if you
    don't know how it exactly does it.

    Read the examples i gave in the discussion with derek.
    Somehow he doesn't want to reply to them but it would be nice if
    someone could explain my observations differently.

    > > I think that's the whole point about arts and science, to take the
    > > given meme/culture structure and change it a bit, to reconstruct it a
    > > bit 'wrong'.
    > Do you want to call that "imitation"?

    No, i call that invention.

    But most people don't invent memes all the time, they copy them.

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