Re: Mutation and Selection

From: Wade T.Smith (wade_smith@harvard.edu)
Date: Thu Nov 29 2001 - 01:28:33 GMT

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Subject: Re: Mutation and Selection
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 20:28:33 -0500
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From: "Wade T.Smith" <wade_smith@harvard.edu>
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    Hi salice@gmx.net -

    >Cultural works actually can mutate (with human help) in place.

    I'm sorry, but, please, show me something that does this. Anything.
    Please.

    I've stared at my keyboard for over three years, and it is just the same.

    Admittedly, it's a bit dustier, and that Moxie stain weren't there when I
    bought it, but, otherwise, it's the same damn keyboard.

    Please.

    >I make the distinction because different people discover different
    >memes in one and the same artefact.

    _If_ memes are only artefacts, then, there is nothing to _find_ in one.
    Memes within memes.... This is not a chinese box. And meanings found are
    not memes discovered.

    >Memes are not products, they are the elements
    >out of which ideas and products can be built.

    Well, you are obviously completely on the side of the Mind-Only-Meme.
    That's a popular perch, but, _if_ you want science in general to take you
    seriously, some empirical work has to be done, and, so far, so much of
    the MOM work has only been interpretations of behaviors, and nothing,
    nothing, has been shown of any empirical or evidential data from the
    place you say these memes reside.

    - Wade

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