From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Tue Jan 29 2002 - 03:55:30 MST
On 29 Jan 2002 at 4:32, L' Ermit wrote:
> [Joe Dees] No, because memes inhabit and compete for space in an intentional
> environment (human brains and the recursive and meaning-creating,
> bestowing-and-apprehending minds which emerge from this complex material
> substrate) rather than in a natural and nonintentional
> environment, such as a terrestrial ecology. People actually intentionally
> deconstruct memeplexes into component memes and recombine them in novel ways
> for preconceived purposes (or just for the helluvit), rather than them just
> mutate at random without so much as a whiff of intentional human agency.
>
> [Hermit] Isn't this one possible expansion of "especially memetic selection"
> (others being genetic and environmental)? What else is implied (to you) by
> "memetic selection"?
>
Your modified quote seemed to imply that memetic mutation was random; I do not
see either the mutation or the selection as random in its entirety, but as a
combination of random (say, inadvertent or accidental) and intentional (as far as
selection goes, for - hooks, among other things - and against - filters, among still
others)(as far as mutation goes, we are here ostensibly engaged in an exercise in
intentionally driven - not random - memetic engineering, for clear and meaningful
purposes). In fact, I see the intentional component in both as quite sizeable. This
is an area where genetic theory and memetic theory significantly diverge.
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