Re: virus: Extrocranial Memes

Wade T.Smith (wade_smith@harvard.edu)
Sat, 8 Aug 98 00:03:46 -0400


>And once _again_ I ask: What does one gain by such a definition of a meme?
>
>Why in Occam's name should we even bring a term like "meme" into a
>description of brain activity when already have a whole jargon in the field
>that describes brain activity in much more accurate terms?

Well, I was attempting to bring it into a field of conscious behavior,
and how accurate _are_ our terms for brain activity? I am also, always,
working from the view that memes are _only_ present in the brain. I have
rejected their artifice in Occam's name. I am not alone here, I just feel
so.

Why in Occam's name should we even bring a term like "meme" into a
description of cultural activity when we already have a whole jargon in
several fields that describes cultural activity in much more accurate
terms?

To turnabout in fair play.

And even in 'brain' form, certainly operable as an evolutionary agent
within the brain, in the sense that where it is is what it does, and the
process of evolution makes new space for it.

>Sorry, I got it from _Communication Networks: Toward a New Paradigm for
>Research_, Everett M. Rogers and D. Lawrence Kincaid (1981).

Ah, well. I'll remember to remind everyone of that definition whenever I
use the word to mean that, or see anyone else use it to mean that.... But
I seem to see several kitchen sinks in their definition.... Should I not
mention the avocado one? Do you honestly think there was one iota of
usefulness to that definition?

>who remembers fondly those bygone days when Wade relied on facts more than
>rhetoric to make his case and was a match for anyone.

When did I use facts?

And yes, fMRI, although of fairly high resolution, would not find a
single mental process- further refinements into the brain's activity,
electrode stimulation and x-ray tomography perhaps, would be needed, but
what analytical technique performed on cultural artifacts (information)
will produce a single cultural process? Is there within your jargons a
microscope of cultural resolutions which will show us the meme, or is
this meme of which you (and many others) speak just a definition of an
largely unexamined idea of a means of cultural transmission and not
reducible to a singularity? I fail to see any facts within so much of
'memetic' analysis. Lots of jargon, lots of academics, lots of statistics
recently, lots of happy talk, but really, no facts. Show me one.

Show me the meme you mean. That is, I think, what we are both asking. I
don't think it's out there.

*****************
Wade T. Smith
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wade_smith@harvard.edu | shouldn't do to a god."
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