From: "Aaron Agassi" <agassi@erols.com>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: i-memes and m-memes
Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 14:36:37 -0400
In-Reply-To: <2dnPwYAo6ny3EwCJ@faichney.demon.co.uk>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk]On Behalf
> Of Robin Faichney
> Sent: Monday, August 30, 1999 8:53 AM
> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Subject: Re: i-memes and m-memes
>
>
> In message <19990830115241.93924.qmail@hotmail.com>, James McComb
> <jamesmccomb@hotmail.com> writes
> >Bill Spight:
> >
> >In "The Evolution of Useful Things" Henry Petroski points out that the
> >function of many surviving craftsman's tools is unknown, because the
> >craftsmen who made them for their own use never revealed the
> secret of how
> >they were used. Do we consider those tools and how they were
> used memes or
> >not? The information was transmissible (heritable), but was never
> >transmitted.
Dormancy is the norm.
> >
> >James McComb:
> >
> >Bill... They are no longer memes, but they are still potentially
> memes. If I
> >might be so arrogant as to quote from my previous post:
> >
> ><< Some replicators replicate well. Other replicators replicate
> poorly. But
> >if a replicator replicates so poorly that it doesn't replicate
> AT ALL, then
> >there is no point in continuing to view it as a replicator. >>
I disagree. Dormancy is the norm, but subject to change.
>
> >Besides, without the appropriate decoding system, it becomes
> meaningless to
> >talk of an artefact containing information.
Artifacts are encoded. Cultures are cipher.
>
> Good point, but surely it means that the example above contains not even
> a potential meme? (And I'm not happy with that concept. Is there any
> systematic way to distinguish between potential memes and any other non-
> memes?)
Potential meme is a bad concept. I only hope that I can sterilize the
idiotic notion! Potentiality is assumed. Dormancy is the norm.
>
> >Speaking of decoding... Let us consider a simple case of memetic
> >transmission, i1->m->i2. In order for the i-form to count as being
> >successfully transmitted, the copy (i2) must be sufficiently
> similar to the
> >original (i1).
What, mutation is antithetical to success? Since when? What are the
criterion for success? Perhaps it would be correct to say that the mutation
was successful, if not the parent.
>
> Yep.
>
> >But there is another way of looking at it. The i-meme is successfully
Not "successfully", whatever that means, but *accurately*. Or is intention
imputed?
> >replicated if the process of decoding it is the INVERSE of the process of
> >encoding it (i.e. the decoding acts to undo the encoding). In (rather
> >informal) symbolism:
> >
> >i1 = i2 iff inv(m->i2) = (i1->m)
>
> I think reciprocity of transformation *means* that i1 = i2. In other
> words, that formula is tautological.
> --
> Robin Faichney
> Get Your FREE Information at
> http://www.conscious-machine.com
>
> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
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===============================================================
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