RE: Beam me up, Scotty

From: Joe Dees (joedees@addall.com)
Date: Sat Feb 02 2002 - 01:36:30 GMT

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    Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 17:36:30 -0800
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    From: "Joe Dees" <joedees@addall.com>
    To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    Subject: RE: Beam me up, Scotty
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    > "Dace" <edace@earthlink.net> <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Beam me up, ScottyDate: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 11:29:23 -0800
    >Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    >
    >
    >
    >> >> > Dimensions are just ways of looking at
    >> >> > space by comparing one arbitrarily chosen section of it to another.
    >> >> > Again, the comparison takes place in the brain and not in space.
    >> >> >
    >> >> > Grant
    >> >>
    >> How do you know that it might, instead of being stored in the "brain"
    >> (that amorpous clump of mush that couldn't possibly "store" memories),
    >> not be beamed to you morphically? Perhaps your amorpous clump of
    >> mush acts as an antenna and is tuned to the right frequency, the species
    >> frequency?
    >
    >Do fill us in on your little sci-fi fantasy, Scott.
    >
    >> Has the hook set well? Can I start reeling it in? Either I'm trolling Ted
    >> the Sheldrakian or Grant who might be too new to know Ted's source
    >> of inspiration.
    >
    >I've never suggested that form (morphe) is beamed into our heads. My claim
    >is that memory is a property of nature. What distinguishes life from, say,
    >books and computers, is that living things possess natural memory-- the
    >retention of the past-- while books and computers rely on storage of
    >material configurations.
    >
    How droll. And disingenuous. The manner in which our brains store information (in configurations of dendrite-and-axon-connected neurons)IS natural; it naturally evolved.
    >
    >Btw, this is Bergson, not Sheldrake. And it was Elsasser, rather than
    >Sheldrake, who first applied Bergson to organisms. Elsasser realized that
    >organisms would have no way of knowing how to develop from the egg without
    >some kind of "holistic memory." As a physicist, he rejected the notion that
    >DNA could somehow set in motion a purely physical process of development.
    >He based his reasoning on the fact that physical systems can be understood
    >according to fairly simple calculations, whereas biological systems are
    >"transcomputational."
    >
    So he was a physicist, ayy? That explain a lot, like, why he was unable to understand the idea of informational encoding in DNA like any reasonable biologist can.
    >
    >Ted
    >
    >
    >
    >===============================================================
    >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

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    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



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