From: "Richard Brodie" <richard@brodietech.com>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: when is a meme selfish?
Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 22:22:30 -0700
In-Reply-To: <MMPR0WAKDWy3Ew1D@faichney.demon.co.uk>
If you were encoded and downloaded onto a CD-ROM, no, I would not call that
information "Robin." I would call it "Robin's data" or some such because it
would not occupy the same privileged place in my life as a friend and
intellectual sparring partner.
A sufficient number of people think it's useful to have a special label
("meme") for mental replicators that I think it's worthwhile being clear
about the definition.
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 9:33 AM
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Re: when is a meme selfish?
In message <NBBBIIDKHCMGAIPMFFPJCECNDJAA.richard@brodietech.com>,
Richard Brodie <richard@brodietech.com> writes
>Would you call a string of letters on paper a gene?
Perhaps. Given sufficient biotech, it might be possible to encode it in
DNA.
>As far I can tell, the
>point you are making is that everything is information.
No, the point I'm making concerns the identity of the meme.
>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.
Agreed. Well, I'm not too keen on the unnecessarily intentional
language, because it seems to suggest that there is really something
special about replicators besides the fact that they happen to replicate
-- but I guess I can let that go for now.
However, what about the case where an item of information is transmitted
from one type of environment, to another, then back to the first type?
Does it thereby change its identity?
>This kind
>of information in a mind is called a meme.
So you keep saying. But I will keep saying that it is silly to restrict
the use of a particular name to a particular location. If I were in
suspended animation, I'd be very like the message on the rock at the
bottom of the sea, but you'd still think of me as "Robin", wouldn't you?
-- 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