Progress, now he wants /progress/. Oi vey.
> Nevertheless, memes cause new memes by their influence. Animals
> do not cause new animals with their spoor.
At some point you stop the metaphor before it becomes silly. The
metaphor in this case stops well before the point of `spawning.' In
short, the animal spawns an idea of its properties in the mind of the
hunter just as meme spoor spawns a meme which has the traits of the
originator as interpreted from the spoor in the mind of the observer.
The similarity isn't a direct mapping.
> I beg to differ. Genes are transmitted by definition. The DNA is
> not (except for that contained in the sex cells). You seem to be
> confusing the two, genes are coded information that just happens
> to be manifested in DNA.
I think the underlying problem is that we have a field built on an
entire series of imprecise usages and sloppy meanings in memetics, in
part because its hard to get the metaphor tuned just right to
communicate `just this and no more.'
> Of course you are welcome to use whatever definitions you like,
> as long as communication is not an issue :)
No one /ever/ said we communicate on this ML ...
--
Alexander Williams {thantos@alf.dec.com / zander@photobooks.com}
Prefect of the 8,000,000th Terran Overlord Government Experimental
Strike Legion, Primary Transport TOG "Bellatores Inquieti"
======================================================================
You ride in 250 tons of molecularly aligned crystalline titanium
wedded to a ceramic ablative matrix. You carry a 200mm Gauss
cannon, two massive 10-gigawatt lasers, two SMLM fire-and-forget
missiles, a Vulcan IV point defense anti-missile system, and a
deadly assortment of other equally lethal weapons.
Your vehicle is the ultimate product of 4,000 years of armored
warfare.
Your life expectancy is less than two minutes.
-- RENEGADE LEGION:
CENTURION