Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id LAA06122 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk); Sun, 7 Oct 2001 11:38:43 +0100 Message-ID: <001701c14f21$e08963e0$2001bed4@default> From: "Kenneth Van Oost" <Kenneth.Van.Oost@village.uunet.be> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> References: <E15oskF-00045O-00@dryctnath.mmu.ac.uk> Subject: Re: What/who selects memes? Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2001 13:18:25 +0200 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2314.1300 X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 Sender: fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
----- Original Message -----
From: salice <salice@gmx.net>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Sent: Thursday, October 04, 2001 12:30 AM
Subject: Re: What/who selects memes?
> At the same time there is just too much (meme)-input that the brain
> could handle it all consciously. And most people do these
> unconscious meme-handling without knowing what they really do.
>
> Dawkin put the example of one meme of a professer, who would look
> down and think 2 minutes before he'd answer. As he wrote he found
> this "funny". Why he found this funny he might not have consciously
> been aware of. But the fact is, that this meme-input made
> him smile or laugh, therefore something resulted from this meme in
> his brain making him laugh and remembering the meme.
Hi Salice,
I agree here on the fact that there ought to be some result from meme- input
but like Pascal Jouxet told us, emotions play a role too.
It could be that the professor ' hit ' some emotional spot while looking
down, and it made him laugh.
It could be that some kind of emotional- memetical landscape was formed
due to former experiences.
Nothing is not yet proven that genes and memes intermix on, for example
an emotional level, where memes drive genetic emotional responses., or
vice versa...
> Nevertheless, if they were able to handle memes, to copy behavior,
> those who would copy the behavior of the person who died after
> eating certain food would probably have died too. Those who copied
> the right behavior, -not- to eat those things survived. So those
> survived who copied the right behavior, those who selected the right
> meme.
<< I think you are not completely in the right here, though !
There is something to be said about that those who survived copied the
right behavior, that they selected the right meme.
If we take memetic evolution for granted and we take their selfish nature
for granted than we see a complete different picture.
Memes than let choose us what we think is the right meme !
Eating tulips- bulbs will kill you and that is the wrong meme, but if you
cook the bulbs you will survive.
In Holland during WWO II people survived on those, but I wonder,
did people survived by trial and error or did " some " meme pop up
somewhere in somebody 's mind saying ' cook me ' !?
Did people get the idea of cooking tulip- bulbs by trial and error, by
experience or by copying behavior !?
I suspect it is a combination of the three, with experience as favorite.
People ' knew ' that cooking any vegetable takes out the poison ingre-
dient and someone tried it with tulip- bulbs.
There was nothing else left, not trying was starving to death,and by the
way, as I recall, Holland ' knew ' already that tulip- bulbs were
poisonious,
their cows died by eating them.
This is like you said, watch nature at work, select the memes, conscious
or not, the right meme or not and probably your chances of surviving
increases but that is not say that it ought to be this way...
Regards,
Kenneth
( I am, because we are) making woopee
===============================================================
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
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Oct 07 2001 - 11:44:05 BST