Re: virus: Nuke Meme (Hrom do tebe!)

Dan Plante (danp@CS347838-A.gvcl1.bc.wave.home.com)
Fri, 22 May 1998 00:00:03 -0700


At 09:51 AM 5/21/98 -0400, you wrote:
>
>Oh yea, it's heatin up, wonderful, proof that no matter how "enlightened" we
>become, it all comes down to feces throwing!! This gave me an idea, about the
>environment in mind that lets memes grow or fade. It seems to me that the
mind,
>a product of brain, has many influences that are internal - ie..
neurochemical
>balances, genetic tendencies etc... in which memes have to exist.

Yes. As posted on Sat, 09 May 1998 14:16:32 -0700:

Memes (bits of information, for lack of a short definition)
do not contain nor manifest their own intentionality, and
your memesphere (that is, the sum total of all the bits of
information, and all the associations of bits of information,
....and all the emergent patterns of associations of bits of
information in your brain) is (at this level of analysis),
functionally distinct from the biological function of the
brain itself. The brain's intrinsic intelligence, tightly
coupled with the operation of the limbic system, manifests
its own emergent: cognition, or "thinking". The limbic system
(acting as the MOTIVATOR, or "driving force") provides the
primal urges and impulses, while intelligence (acting as the
FACILITATOR, or "steering device") provides a mechanism to
perceive patterns that enables associating things in the
environment with the promise of satisfying the corresponding
urges and drives (note that this also includes the urge or
drive to avoid fear and pain, etc.). When the association and
subsequent attainment is successful, the association is
reinforced, when it is unsuccessful, it is weakened; but either
way, the experience causes re-thinking or re-cognition
(recognition) that serves to further develop the set of
associations (meme-complexes) in the brain.

This process, iterated countless trillions of times in ways large
and small, gross and subtle, experiential and introspective, builds,
over time, the size and complexity of the set of associations in the
brain, and hence the depth in the level of abstractions therein.

In essence, the limbic system is the motivator, the cortical
structures are the facilitator, and the memesphere is the resulting
set of (associations (of associations (of associations..of
patterns))) received by the senses. These co-operate in synergy to
produce the emergent property of individual awareness; i.e: the
human mind.

The symbolic representation of information (language) together
with the vectors to reproduce it, or "communicate" (e.g.: speaking
and listening, reading and writing), as well as a plurality of minds
each able to recognize the benefits to itself, operate in synergy to
produce the emergent property of "culture" or "memetics".

>Any of you
>that know me, know that i suspect that fear and reproduction are the most
major
>internal influences on mind (There are many others that play parts, but I
>consider fear and sex to be the most primitive and powerful) I suspect that
>memes that use these basic environmental factors as building blocks or as
>important parts of their makup, have a very high survival rate. I believe
that
>*religion* is a fear based meme, and is therefore very locked into mind. I
>would also suspect that the opposite is somewhat true. I, who have
dedicated a
>great deal of personal effort to eliminating the concept of fear, perhaps
have
>an opposite problem. Memes that need fear to survive, don't do well in my
>*mind*. This has at times caused me to be trusting when I should have been
>weary, or perhaps I have chosen a more dangerous and less beneficial
method of
>accomplishing some goal due to my lack of *fear*.
>
>What do you guys think of the concept of "meme environment" in relation to
>internal factors? Has this subject been broached before and I missed it?

I may not have used enough example and analogy to trigger recognition, based
on the model you used in your own mind to represent the same abstract concept.
The models I host to represent concepts and ideas are Cartesian or
"flow-chart"
in nature, representing form and function, respectively, in patterns and meta-
patterns I have perceived. Yours seems to be more "organic" in nature, but
also
seems to amount to the same thing.
Whatever works.

>Sodom
>Bill Roh

Dan Plante
------------------------------------------
instincts --> input
input + thinking --> data
data + thinking --> information
information + thinking --> knowledge
knowledge + thinking --> understanding
understanding + thinking --> wisdom
wisdom + thinking -->
------------------------------------------