RE: virus: The Virus Homepage stuff

Dave Pape (davepape@dial.pipex.com)
Sun, 9 Feb 1997 21:20:28 GMT


At 14:02 07/02/97 -0800, Tad wrote:

>Dave Pape wrote:

>>I think that "level 3" memes may well be dominant a higher percentage of the
>>time in Richard's memespace than in mine, because he /works/ in memetics,
>>whereas I work in food distribution.
>
>This very well explains why you feel inferior and buy the nonsense called
>"Level-3".

Here, in reply, is some rhyming-slang idiom from one of my many great punk
frineds, here in the UK:

You're having a fcken turkish, mate!

(You're having a "turkish bath", pronounced "barf", meaning "laugh", the
whole phrase {"You are having a turkish bath"} implying that I interpret
your point as being meant in a jocular manner. And I refer to you as "mate"
so as to defuse the aggression implicit in the rest of the quote.)

Feel inferior? No. I feel okay at the moment, because I'm talking to people
all over the world about the things that I most want to talk about. I feel
like an info-god, coursing through corridors infinite, all arrayed 'round
with dripping knoowledge-jewels.

Buy? Well... I've ordered a copy of his book from Blackwell's bookshop in
Reading, though they won't be able to get it to me for four weeks, in which
time I might have decided not to bother.

"Nonsense": presumably, "internally self-competing meme-structure", or,
"meme-structure which doesn't mesh with the meme structure which gives rise
to me". Do Richard's memes mesh with my memes? ...I'll have to report back
to you when I've read the book.

I do believe that memetics offers a view of many belief systems which seems
objective, in that a memeticist can say "Islam is a belief system" and
"science is a belief system" and "memetics is a belief system" and "my
personality is a belief system"... so I think that I host /some/ memes which
are resonant with Richard's pro-level-3 memes. But I KNOW I also host many
memes incompatible with those hosted in the head entitled "Richard
Brodie"... and I'll perhaps be in a better position to say whether I agree
with his "level 3 ideas" when I "know more about them", ie when more
detailed sub-memes regarding that subject
have impinged on my mind.

When I say that

>I think that "level 3" memes may well be dominant a higher percentage of the
>time in Richard's memespace than in mine

I mean that memes tagged in this list as pertaining to level 3 are activated
in Richard's head more of the time than they are in my head.

I don't think that this implies that I "buy" his memes... since my memes
/outcompeting/ Richard's memes (me disbelieving his memes) would also mean
that memes tagged in this list as pertaining to level 3 are activated in
Richard's head more of the time than they are in my head.

Dave Pape
===============================================================================
If you mapped memespace onto a 2D plane, then made a 3-D graph with
Activation Level as the vertical axis, and animated shots of the graph over
time, it'd look like the progress of some crazy Hokusai ocean.

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