snip...
>I don't know maybe its just me,
>blinded by my memes. Any help clarifying what memes are and what this
group is
>trying to do with them would be greatly appreciated.
>
>Ray Higgins "Believing is Seeing"
>rayhiggins@aol.com
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Reposted from April 7, 1997:
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At 01:00 PM 4/6/97 -0700, Prof. Tim wrote:
>
>On Sat, 6 Apr 1997, Tadeusz Niwinski wrote:
>
>> And because we also share *many* other hobbies is it OK to sell all of them
>> as memetics? According to your classification, Tim, is "Level-3
>> breakthrough": memetics paradigm, Life 101, mental masturbation,
philosophy,
>> drug experimentation, queen's pussy, or all of the above?
>
>Have you looked lately at the percent of posts on this list that directly
>explore the nature and/or qualities of memes? I'm not asking for 100%,
>but can we at least raise the number into the double digits, please?
Well....okay, since you seem polite and genuine about it (noteworthy in
itself on this list), but I should caution you Tim; steel yourself for the
inevitable dearth of honestly constructive replies, and the equally
predictable deluge of posts nit-picking the single digit assertion. ;-)
I guess the natural thing to do when presented with a request like this
is to 'suck back and reload' as it were; to ask ourselves "What have we got
so far, and where do we want to go?", the answers to the former usually
shed light on critical factors that determine the latter.
What /do/ we have so far? Well, the usual tack I take in this situation
is to go over how we got here. I find this creates consensus on a shared
framework of knowledge and understanding to build on, and also serves to
weed out baseless assumptions and erroneous impressions that tend to worm
their way into our understanding of the subject over time. So, let's see if
I can go over this history and possibly get rid of some of my own worms.
As I understand it, Dawkins was the first to publish anything regarding
memes or memetics as it is 'understood' today. I also get the impression
that he came to the conclusions he did (sorry, I haven't read his work),
upon noticing patterns in how thoughts, ideas and their ilk, appear and
change in the human mind, spread through a population, and affect behaviour
at the individual and cultural level. He may have either noticed a pattern
first, then drawn a corollary with genetics later, or his understanding (or
model) of the overall dynamics of genetic evolution caused a direct
recognition
of a similar functional dynamic. I think the latter is more likely, but either
way, the comparison was made and the term 'meme' was coined.
This begs the first question, one that I think needs to be addressed first
before any useful development of meme dynamics or 'memetics' can occur, and
has been touched on, but not followed through, on this list in the past. The
question is: How closely do the attributes of genes and the dynamics of
genetics correspond to the same in memes and memetics? As Richard Brodie
pointed out rather succinctly in a previous post:
Consciousness emerges from memes, which emerge from genes, which emerge
from chemicals, which emerge from atoms, which emerge from
energy...doesn't mean it's the same thing.
I believe we have to ask ourselves "Do they correspond? If so, how well,
and with which additions, deletions or caveats? If not, or not well enough
(define 'well enough' any way you like), then maybe we should take a closer
look at the percieved pattern itself, rather than the historical attribute
of 'gene-like'. Again, I think the latter is more likely, and revisiting
said patterns, especially from a cross-disciplinary viewpoint, might be
illuminating.
Dan
-------------------------------------------------------------
initial conditions = data (conception)
control of data = information (conception to puberty)
control of information = knowledge (puberty to marriage)
control of knowledge = wisdom (marriage to divorce)
-------------------------------------------------------------
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and, reposted from April 11, 1997:
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At 12:07 PM 4/7/97 +0100, Reed Konsler wrote:
>>From: Tim Rhodes <proftim@speakeasy.org>
>>Date: Sun, 6 Apr 1997 13:00:16 -0700 (PDT)
>
>>Have you looked lately at the percent of posts on this list that directly
>>explore the nature and/or qualities of memes? I'm not asking for 100%,
>>but can we at least raise the number into the double digits, please?
>
>Um, Tim, this is the Church of Virus, not alt.memetics. Meme theory
>informs, but doesn't circumscribe, our dialectic. This is a "free-market"
>of ideas...each person posts what they wish when it strikes their fancy.
>Given that memetics is such a powerful tool, I'm sure we will return to it...
>but sometimes the mind, or a discussion group, needs a sabatical.
>
>Remember, everything of significance happened by chance.
>
Here I go putting words in other peoples' mouths again....
I think Tim's statement was drawn from the perspective that, while this list
may not necessarily exist for the sole purpose of plumbing the depths of the
meme, it nevertheless has, as its raison d'etre, an acknowledgement of
memetics
as a perceived phenomenon. Further, and based on this point, I believe he was
trying to draw attention to the fact that a large number of postings to this
list use the terms 'meme' or 'memetics' as the subject of argument, with
little
or no consensus on what these terms specify.
Dan
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End of reposts
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An observation:
If I want to prattle on about philosophical issues (especially if I don't
want anything icky like facts, or the peer-reviewed literature getting in
the way), I can do it in the CoV list.
If I want to understand 'memetics' or observe 'memetic engineering' in
action, I observe a 'memetic engineer' (in no particular order):
- a leading behavioral psychologist
- a successful politician
- a successful advertising agent
"You've come a long way, baby."
Dan
----------------------------------------------------------------
initial conditions = data (conception)
control of data = information (conception to puberty)
control of information = knowledge (puberty to marriage)
control of knowledge = understanding (marriage to divorce)
control of understanding = wisdom (divorce to remarriage)
----------------------------------------------------------------