Re: virus: Rationality

Martz (martz@martz.demon.co.uk)
Tue, 4 Mar 1997 21:27:51 +0000

On Mon, 3 Mar 1997, Alexander Williams <thantos@alf.dec.com> wrote:
>In short, if memes were actually the transit materil, as it
>were, you wouldn't see `misparsed' memes, only intact or untransmitted.

Why? Are you trying to say that transfer loss doesn't occur in the
(any?) transit material?

>> that DNA is self-interpreting (or is it? anyone?) whereas the memes are
>> interpreted by machinery resident in the receiving station. To carry
>> that metaphor a bit further; it would be COV.ZIP for a meme and
>> COVZIP.EXE for a gene.
>
>Memes interpret the data stream, you realize, so in a sense memes are
>self-interpreting.

But the meme is not interpreting itself. That's being done by some other
memes. Sort of like a piece of software (a compiler) interpreting
another piece of software (a program written for that compiler).

-- 
Martz
martz@martz.demon.co.uk


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