Re: virus: Rationality

jonesr@gatwick.geco-prakla.slb.com
Fri, 28 Feb 97 09:21:53 GMT


Alex Willaims wrote:

> [Drakir wrote:]
> > But that's how transmission works. If I were to have a phone conversation
> > with you, I could say something, in English which you would then interpret,
> > becuase you can speak English. Does this mean that I havn't transmitted
> > anything to you?
>
> No, actually, you haven't transmitted anything but some
> pressure-patterns in the air via other means. Memes /themselves/ are
> never transmitted. They travel via no medium, except in further
> abstraction, one I'm loath to step to because it loses some necessary
> detail for me. In the camping example, what you've transmitted are
> some marks, some traces in the world which I then come along and
> /interpret/, however fuzzily.

I'm afraid I still veiw that as transmission. For example, if I were
to verbally propose meme X to you, and your current memesphere had
room for that meme, then the phrase, or whatever, X would linger in
your mind for a bit, until such time as you have thought about it an
accepted it. Surely, then, the meme has been transmitted.

I think we're going to have a definition problem here (surprise-
surprise). I noticed in another post, Brodie used the word "propogation".
Would this be the same as transmission?

> Language is just a very complex series of signs that memes use to
> signal from one cluster of memes to others in another head across a
> vast uncrossable sea of nullity. Those signals are /not/ memes in the
> same way that the flashes of Morse sent across the ocean to another
> ship moored at port are not the message intended. It can be
> reconstructed from, with some degree of accuracy, but the message is
> not transmitted, signals are and then interpreted, with varying
> degrees of success.

Hmmm ... I'm afraid I would regard that as transmission. Sorry :(

Drakir