Message-Id: <3.0.1.32.19980909133117.00e9d64c@popmail.mcs.net>
Date: Wed, 09 Sep 1998 13:31:17 -0500
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: Aaron Lynch <aaron@mcs.net>
Subject: Re: Xtra!
In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19980904120720.00db00e8@popmail.mcs.net>
At 12:07 PM 9/4/98 -0500, Aaron Lynch wrote:
>Derek, ...
>I will be address your arguments as presented in your recent paper by
>writing up an appropriate commentary. ...
I am now formulating my reply. However, for the benefit of other readers on
this listserve, I will point out that there are some drastic differences
between what I have said in Lynch (1998) and what Gatherer claims that I
have said in Lynch (1998). Anyone wanting to see what I really said will
just have to read my 1998 paper.
For example, in order to reach the conclusion that I am proposing a
particular model of neurobiology, Gatherer snips off the extremely
important word "IF" from the sentence
"If a mnemon resides very redundantly in someone's brain, that person still
counts as only one host and one mnemon instantiation." (Lynch, 1998, end of
section 4) Then Gatherer attacks this supposed neurobiology as if it were
mine.
The actual point I was making was that if a piece of information exists,
for instance, in both hemispheres of the brain, or even more than once in
each hemisphere, then that piece of information will still only count as
one mnemon instantiation per person.
I have seen misreadings of my work that seemed to result from busy people
reading too quickly, but dropping the word "If" from the quoted material
does not strike me as a case in point. A wide variety of other problems in
the Gatherer paper are equally perplexing.
--Aaron Lynch
http://www.mcs.net/~aaron/thoughtcontagion.html
===============================================================
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