Date: Thu, 23 Apr 1998 11:17:27
From: Josip Pajk <j.p.pajk@usa.net>
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Memes are Interactors
Bruce,
Unfortunately, I had no chance to read de Bono's work, but after your comments I surely will.
I never felt any concern over the possibility of mass mis-information being transferred on the Internet, because if you carefully read my comments on this list, I do not believe that (mis)information are in fact ever transferred in a strict sense, either on the Internet or by other means. If anyone can publish anything they like, anyone have also the freedom of reading anything they like and make (produce) any pattern (information) they like upon what structures they had a chance (select) to read.
I see the Internet as a huge resource (energetical) structure where any person's self-organized dynamic system (brain) can find the "food" (data resources) of its preference for the increase of its internal organizational level. In other words, I can not believe that people are static (reactive) systems waiting for some commercial (TV or other media) stuff to tell them how to behave. I strongly believe that people are dynamic (proactive) systems that have a will to search, select, compare and reject the data (structures, patterns) that can be found in this chaotic communication environment and build their original informational (memetic) structures according to their particular interests (goals).
This brings us to another point of your comment. No matter how intelligent am I, it is not up to me if my ideas will be accepted or rejected in the environment of this list consisting of its subscribers' brains. All I can do is produce structures like this one made with my weak linguistic and memetic capabilities, and throw it in the arena. If they are fit enough they will survive, if not, maybe some portions of them will help someone to produce some more durable structures.
About "inventing the wheel" (there where I am from we have another phrase: "inventing hot-water"), it is possible that something I said was already said by someone else (as Castaneda's Don Huan says "there are many paths to the same destination, ones going through the bushes, others around them..."). I have a strong sensation that everything worth to be said was already said or written by someone else in the past, with other words used and leading to other conclusions. When reading, for example, Aaron's works (I agree with 90% of what he says) I'm really astonished how he doesn't "see" from the observed and presented facts the same pattern as I do. The only answer that I have for this is the explanation above. Anyone of us have a limited life time and a limited capacity to absorb all the relevant data for a particular issue of our interest. Moreover, anyone of us have a different understanding about the same observed set of data. This is why I do not like the term "academic arena". Ar
ena means that one of the gladiators must die "killed" by the "winner". I see the scientific environment more as a "production facility" where we are not "inventing the wheel" but are trying to produce another, upgraded, "new type of wheel". As any other production this one also needs tools. Only science with its rigid structure can produce reliable tools and production (control) procedures that will assure a very high quality of the "final product".
This is our goal as I see it, and I believe that anyone of us have a place in this "factory" where to make a contribution in the "production". No one of us have the exclusive rights granted of telling the "genuine everlasting truth".
Josip
http://members.tripod.com/~THREENITY/index.html
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