X-Message-Number: 28435
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 18:33:15 -0400
From: Keith Henson <>
Subject: Basic memetics for Anthony

>
>Message #28428
>Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2006 12:42:53 -0600
>From: "Anthony ." <>
>Subject: memes = isomorphism
>
> > Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2006 13:19:16 -0400
> > From: Keith Henson <>
> > Subject: genies and nenes [Anthony .]
>
> > >How is the information independent of the media the information is 
> coded in?
> >
> > When you can convert from one media to another.  Tape, paper, CD, hard
> > disk, etc can all be used to store text and it is no big deal to convert
> > from one to the other.
>
>This is nothing but isomorphism. Is that all a meme is!?

No.

>The information is never independant, it is always encoded in media.

Of course.  Information has to be encoded in some matter, even if it is 
photons.

>(If you are saying the info. is independant (like some "memeticians"
>do), then you are espousing another form of philosophical idealism -
>prey to the same old criticisms.)

I am an electrical engineer.   Go read 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon to see why information in the 
abstract does not bother engineers.

I find the concept of memes as elements of culture or replicating 
information patterns or similar descriptions useful to model what goes on 
in the world going back to when the hominid line started to chip rocks.

If you don't that's fine with me.  I won't argue philosophy with you, 
that's the wrong field to talk about information (and it's connection to 
thermodynamics).

> > Genes too can be stored on various media and
> > converted back to DNA strings.
>
>When genetic information is stored as such, it is genetic information,
>not a gene.
>
>When information about other things is stored as such, it is
>information, not a "meme".

In both cases the only constant of a gene or a meme *is* the 
information.  Of course to have real world effects a gene has to be coded 
in DNA and be in a cell.  To have real world effects a meme has to be in a 
brain.  But memes and genes can be coded in a variety of ways.

Go take a look at the listing any any book of the base pairs for a gene 
such as hemoglobin.  The list isn't going to say "here is a list of the DNA 
bases for hemoglobin" it is just going to say "The Hemoglobin Gene."

Try Henson baseball meme in Google.

Keith Henson

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