Date: Mon, 23 Jun 1997 10:56:02 +0000
From: Bill Benzon <bbenzon@meta4inc.com>
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Is Memetics Needed? [Was : A Drosophila etc]
Timothy Perper:
> Ans 4. A great many people live in cities because memes for
> city-dwelling
> are better at replicating themselves than memes for living anywhere
> else.
This needs a little elaboration. The reason these memes are so good at
replicating is they concentrate their hosts in close proximity to
another, thus making it easy for hosts to reinforce one another's choice
of city living. And when non-city dwellers visit their city-dwelling
cousins, they will become surrounded by hosts of the city-dwelling
memes. In fact, this process is so very effective that it's hard to
understand why we have anyone who doesn't live in cities. Does this
qualify as the sort of puzzle which forces us to consider particulate
inheritance? Maybe the city-dwelling meme only expresses itself in every
other one in a chain of hosts. Hmmm...
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