Hi Brett,
nice precisions, but I'm thinking long the lines of a generic
variation-selection process, where the important thing is
variation or the conscious preservation of variability.
The idea here is to provide a new way of looking at things to
people. This so as to bring about a paradigm shift as soon as
possible.
Even thought the term meme has been around since the 70's many
people don't know about it, or consider it to be bull or
proto-science. I believe it will be accepted very soon, but how
soon actually depends on the spreading of the meme meme.
The important thing is to preserve variability. THe rest is the
selection by people of what they choose to believe in, to apply
to propagate, to study, to teach, etc...
Certainly perfecting on's work is highly laudable because this
improves the information structure (which is more likely to
prevail against spatio-temporal disturbances).
But isn't education also very important ? Would I find people
to talk to about memes if Dawkins never proposed to view ideas
like this ? And if his ideas weren't discussed at length in
books and on the net ?
I think somebody else may have even proposed something similar
before Dawkins but in other terms.
Yash.