Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id UAA16077 (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 20:24:45 GMT Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2001 15:19:18 -0500 Subject: Re: Definition, Please 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: <001301c17776$b950a180$fb03bed4@default> Message-Id: <09163087-E374-11D5-96F1-003065A0F24C@harvard.edu> X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.475) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> And IMO, sex has not to be physical !
Well, speak for yourself, please....
Entertaining a sexual component to memetics is a prankish thing
probably- and perhaps too much of a analogy with genetics, in
that, since evolution has found sexual replication to be an
advantageous thing, I was thinking that memetics should possess
such a mechanism also. Hell, I was also thinking that since sex
is so necessary anyway, there must be something of it in
memetics, which is so necessary in this time to cultural
evolution.
But it may well, as you say, be part of the cognition involved
with considering ideas in the first place.
Are some things combining in memetics the way some things are
sexually in genetics? Maybe not. And, like you also mentioned,
there has to be a compatibility issue as well- meme A might not
be mutatable by combination with meme B- different species of
meme.
But also, like you said, there doesn't seem to be much
constraint about partner choice, either- cars covered in grass
and paintings using urine are not only possible, but have been
done. Buildings that look like animals. Houses made of beer
cans. Sexual analogy doesn't seem at all impossible with such a
range of activities and choices in both arenas.
But to make a meme, one has to actually do it, and doing it, is,
well, (nudge, nudge, wink, wink), what it is....
- Wade
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