From: "Richard Brodie" <richard@brodietech.com>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: when is a meme selfish?
Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 07:00:10 -0700
In-Reply-To: <9UadiDAe3Oy3EwyP@faichney.demon.co.uk>
Would you call a string of letters on paper a gene? As far I can tell, the
point you are making is that everything is information. Fine, you'll get no
argument from me. Now I want to understand how culture evolves. Memetics is
about how certain kinds of information, in certain environments, tends to
influence the future by causing replicas of itself to proliferate. This kind
of information in a mind is called a meme.
Richard Brodie richard@brodietech.com
Author, "Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme"
Free newsletter! http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/meme.htm
-----Original Message-----
From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk]On Behalf
Of Robin Faichney
Sent: Sunday, August 29, 1999 1:23 AM
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Re: when is a meme selfish?
In message <NBBBIIDKHCMGAIPMFFPJOEBPDJAA.richard@brodietech.com>,
Richard Brodie <richard@brodietech.com> writes
>My whole point was to show why the label "meme" (Dawkins B/Dennett/Brodie
>definition as information in a mind) was interesting. The information
"Jesus
>Saves" in the mind of a Christian evangelist influences more people to have
>that information as part of their mental programming in the future. The
same
>information on a rock in Morse code at the bottom of the sea has little if
>any effect on the future. The former is a meme; the latter isn't.
>Information in minds has a particular power to affect the future. I'm not
>saying that information outside of minds has NO such power, just that it
>needs different kinds of help to make it replicate.
It's fine to point out the differences between different encodings, but
that's no reason to suggest there's a difference in what's encoded.
And if it's the same information, then why should its location affect
what we call it?
That the rock on the seabed is unlikely to affect culture is true, but
that is a contingent factor. If we're looking at the principles
involved, then the potential of that rock to transmit the meme to
another brain is crucial, however unlikely the actual occurrence.
-- Robin Faichney Get Your FREE Information at http://www.conscious-machine.com=============================================================== 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
=============================================================== 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