Re: virus: Random thoughts & more poor analogies!

Wade T.Smith (wade_smith@harvard.edu)
Sun, 16 Aug 98 10:02:32 -0400


>Would you not agree if you can answer a question correctly, then you
>have shown you have acquired the meme (or memes) necessary to do so?

No, I would not agree with that at all. Echoes are not memes.

>You tell me what hypothesis
>concerning memes you would like an experiment created for and I'll see
>if I can come up with an experiment that tests that hypothesis.

Well, I would be happy to find, in the brain, the first effector of a
behavior. The behavior would need to be simplified immensely, like an
eye-movement towards a specific area. Or I would be happy to show a
situation where a like behavior can be shown to require a meme, or not
require a meme, and the requisite brain scan or other evidence that said
behavior can happen with two different sets of electro-chemical
effectors, such that one is autonomous (or learned by habit and rote) and
one is cultural, that is, some level of conscious thought is needed- (or
simply two distinct brain activations can produce the same result.)

My initial and specific idea was to examine dream states, since I
consider dream states to be absent of memes, since there is no behavior,
but there is internal 'mapping'.

But you see, I am also in the camp of the neuro-biologists here- I do not
think the meme will be found any other way, and that what is 'found' is a
somewhat handy but diffuse and vague bunch of ramblings about ideas and
mind, all tossing out at sea in a raft without a sail.

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