Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id SAA15887 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 27 Nov 2001 18:38:07 GMT Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2001 13:32:40 -0500 Subject: Re: Study shows brain can learn without really trying Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed From: Wade Smith <wade_smith@harvard.edu> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In-Reply-To: <25815.1006883372@www20.gmx.net> Message-Id: <23B06CB8-E365-11D5-96F1-003065A0F24C@harvard.edu> X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.475) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> I guess your point is that music has to be recorded to be a meme?
> Well that's bullshit. You can copy tunes by just hearing them
> from someone
> singing.
No, the feces of a bull is not a meme at all, unless I throw it
at you. Monkey see, though, monkey do.
Yes, music has to be recorded to be a meme. (Or written, or
displayed in some way.) The audience at a concert, while being
engaged in listening, and while sitting on a meme, and reading a
meme that was passed out when they gave the usher their meme, is
only performing the cultural behavior and etiquette of
listening, not of using a meme. And none of them will make a
meme while listening either.
Again, I'm being strict here- artefact only. (That is the
confine I've decided to inhabit.)
> What do you think about radio?
My old Kenwood is a wonderful meme. I give contributions to the
local MIT station, using my legal tender memes. I call them on
the meme connected to the phone lines and ask them to play
obscure songs from the vast collection of memes I have in my
record collection. Luckily, sometimes they have the same meme in
theirs, and I can hear it when they use it.
> you find
> out that it is a live broadcast of a band playing. Suddenly
> it's not a meme
> anymore?
I'm listening to a meme, the radio. I'm using it. The people
broadcasting are using it. But, yeah, the sound it's making is
not a meme. It ain't an artefact I can use or mutate in any way.
And if I ask someone in the same room to stop what they are
doing and listen, then we are both using the meme, we are not
using the sound emanating from it, although that's a very nice
technological function it is designed to produce.
Again, being strict.
The behaviors of primping and grooming in chimps are not memes
either, regardless of the socialness, culturalness (accepting
culturalness in other species), or etiquette of the behavior.
The sounds they make are not memes either, regardless of the
possible information and evolutionary advantage such auditions
might have or convey.
Cultural passage of tribal traditions, like oral history, aren't
memes either. We may be lucky to meme them, though, through
films and recordings, and ethnographic journals. But if we
aren't, then, when the last storyteller dies, the story is gone.
Unusable. Unmemetic.
Again, being strict. And again, so far, I can discern no logical
argument to sway me. Interesting, as I have only disinterest in
this position, and am adopting it as an experiment. So far, it's
holding up, while the objections seem bias-ridden and
emotionally-tied, if not totally faith assertions or
non-evidentially grounded assumptions.
- Wade
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