From: "Tim Rhodes" <proftim@speakeasy.org>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: 'Experience' as 'substrate'
Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1998 12:45:49 -0700
Chris wrote:
>I wonder if we might usefully describe a meme as a self-replicating
>'pattern of experience'. A certain pattern of sensory experience may
>carry a sensual 'reward' such that the experiencing organism is
>motivated to behave in such a way as to attempt to _reproduce_ that
>sensory reward. Variation occurs when such behavior patterns have
>'unintended' experiential consequences, which must then be 'adjusted
>for' by further behavior modifications by the affected nervous system.
>Thus 'experience', as a _self-designing_ cybernetic operation of the
>(in our case 'human') nervous system, becomes the 'substrate' in which
>'memes', in conjunction with their generative behavior patterns and
>the nervous systems which execute them, are 'evolved'.
>
>What do you think?
Sounds like your on the right track, to me!
-Tim Rhodes
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