X-Message-Number: 4948 Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 21:37:02 -0700 From: John K Clark <> Subject: SCI.CRYONICS Memes -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In #4944 Peter Merel <> On Fri, 6 Oct 1995 Wrote: >It seems plain that the meaning of any information >depends upon the context within which it is considered. That is certainly true for information, but less important when you talk about knowledge, and not important at all when dealing with wisdom. >Memes, therefore, can not be held to exist consistently >across their hosts. Memes are not completely consistent. So what? Partial consistency is good enough, absolute consistency can be found only in the realm of pure mathematics and there is some doubt even about that. Also we are not talking about any conceivable host but only a tiny subset of that, human minds. People are not identical but they undoubtedly have much in common. Memes that exploit those similarities are successful, that is they are duplicated in other minds. Memes that are highly individualistic, that can work only in one particular mind, that have meaning only to one person are unsuccessful because they die with the person. Some mystical ideas may be of that sort. > one host's internal representation of a meme need not >coincide in any particular with the internal representation >of that meme in another host. But the two hosts are able to communicate so the internal representation could not be too dissimilar, besides, the difference between one host and another is because of different genes and different memes and both are pure information. >there is no absolute context within which meaning can >be determined And there is no absolute meaning of meaning that is not circular. A successful meme has nothing to do with "ultimate truth", justice, or the American way, it just found a more fruitful way to reproduce itself before it's host died than the competition. >Memes, therefore, can not be demonstrated to exist >except within the mind of a memeticist. I'm afraid I don't get your point. It's certainly true that memes are exclusively a phenomena of the mind, and it's also true that it matters not a bit if that mind believes in the theory of memes or not. >Memetics might then be viewed with the same distaste >that we apply to racism. [memetics] is quite ugly and >derogatory. The memeticist dismisses people of differing >cultures, religions and politics as "bots" or "oids" or >"infected" or one of a dozen other disdainful eptithets. >[...] similar to the terms favoured by cults As I understand your argument, memetics is untrue because anything that engages in gratuitous, emotion charged insults must be false. I seem to have detected a contradiction, but don't let that bother you, as I said before, it happens to the best of us from time to time and doesn't necessarily mean that the idea is totally worthless. It is bad public relations however. >Memetics treats competing philosophies in obstructionist >terms That's not very surprising, all memes are engaged in a struggle for existence, fighting over finite resources, brain power. John K Clark -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.i iQCzAgUBMHX80H03wfSpid95AQGjCgTuOVsUxUnN2+bVBGNVuO8yXKjDQe6VhOt9 TuRhCQd6Fwf5VJ0MhVTYmL4vWBJlUpAUDgmNoDzzuJYmzJrgab/IOEmihxfAIM3d 6aRJNEHDmPUS6czQk+C8r+N6K1JrKqUA39DBvW9nn6IOTpxOiE3VGJ4p0zsxyvMd 0XJCiZ4QAqvpquuwINLqwKg4BvXWITl61VyFKS/5VISg94CF598= =aJQk -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=4948