From: "Aaron Agassi" <agassi@erols.com>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: i-memes and m-memes
Date: Thu, 2 Sep 1999 23:39:35 -0400
In-Reply-To: <NBBBIIDKHCMGAIPMFFPJAEHNDJAA.richard@brodietech.com>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk]On Behalf
> Of Richard Brodie
> Sent: Wednesday, September 01, 1999 3:08 PM
> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Subject: RE: i-memes and m-memes
>
>
> Robin wrote:
>
> <<In order to obtain a complete causal explanation involving memes, we
> have no choice but to view the meme as both being expressed in behavior
> and residing in the brain. To reject either "external" or "internal"
> form is to blow a great hole in the memetic story: memes have no way to
> get from A to B.>>
>
> Well said. I've still never understood the position that a
> "behavior" can be
> a replicator in anything but a very instantaneous sense, like perhaps a
> contagious yawn. But if a behavior is replicated at a later point in time,
> there must be something stored in the mind to make that happen, right?
It isn't a replicator, but replicated.
>
> One quibble: It is certainly possible for a meme, residing in a
> mind, to be
> part of a mental state that generates some set of behaviors that in turn
> cause the original meme to be replicated in another mind WITHOUT calling
> those behaviors "memes."
Behiors are mot memes. Behaviors are memetic.
>While I agree with you about the
> interesting nature
> of information flow, I see no usefulness in diluting the word "meme" by
> using it to refer to ALL encodings of ALL information involved in cultural
> evolution.
>
> "Ice," for example, is an interesting word meaning water in its frozen
> state. Ice melts and evaporates, or sublimates, forming water vapor, which
> may rise sufficiently high to the point that it condenses and
> freezes, once
> again forming ice. However, it wasn't ice during those intermediate stages
> nor would it be useful to call it "encoded ice" or anything like that.
> Similarly, although some meme transmission can be usefully seen
> as directly
> encoded and unencoded en route from mind to mind, my suspicion is
> that most
> of it is not so direct, that memes "precipitate" into a new mind through a
> statistically predictable but chaotic process in which one individual meme
> cannot really be said to be encoded in one specific behavior or artifact.
>
> 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
>
>
> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
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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