virus: What makes memes compete?

Dave Pape (davepape@dial.pipex.com)
Sun, 13 Apr 1997 19:19:43 +0100 (BST)


>From: "Speed Konsler" <konsler@ascat.harvard.edu>
>Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 16:48:18 -0400

>==So here's another question: How many copies of a kind of meme do you host?

[Enough examples of doghatred awready]

>==Presumably these all weigh in to some internal arguments en masse? Do they?
>==But are in competition for direct expression when it comes to me actually
>==SAYING something negative about dogs? Uh? Could I be any more freeform,
>maybe?

>Yes, Dave! More freefoem, I love it!

Blimey! You're keen! Intellectual Amfeetermines!

>I always thought of things in terms of neural nets. Perhaps there aren't
>really discrete "memes" but webs of interconnections.

Got to be, in my opinion. All words are defined by others, and thus are kind
of links between other words... thinking's about linking perception and
action in advantageous ways... paradoxically, I [fleetingly] think that
/linguistically/ is the only way nature thinks about stuff as objects in and
of themselves...????

>A certian pattern
>corresponds to your concept of "dog" bleeding into your concept of "animal" and
>"shit" and even making connections deep into your hate filled lizard brain.

ROOOAAARRRR!!!

Cool! I reckon the lizard-brain stuff is VERY important. EG, how much of
thinking you like or dislike something is you associating that thing with
"unhappy" activity in your limbic system? Nearly all? -READY!

>So when you recieve input like "dog" or the image which you see as a dog or a
>pile of doo on the pavement it engages that network and the neurons test each
>other in a chaotic pattern which settles upon:
>
>"Fucking dogs! Shit all over the pavement; I can't understand what people see
>in them...you know, Brodie is right about this pets as infectious memes thing."

Would the nerual net "settle upon that pattern", or would you only hear that
ordered, linguistic sentence when it was actually SPOKEN? Erm, either to
yourself (in which case I reckon it'd have a kind of multi-layered, partly
scrappy grammar) or to someone else, when the grammar might be more fully
consistent? The neural net would engage, and there'd be crazy-dope shitloads
of parallel distributed processing going down, anyways.

>If that web seems to correspond with reality (for instance the person
>next to you says "Oh, let me tell you a story! ...etc.")

There you are people! Concensus Reality in aktion. Everyone else I respect
thinks dogs are bad, therefore dogs being bad corresponds to Reality.

>then your mind makes a
>mental note to reinforce those connections. Maybe next time you hate dogs a
>little more...which is OK, I guess, if you don't end up hurting the dogs.

AND EVEN IF YOU DO, HA HA HA HA HA HA HA >;)

[CLIP]

>It is only very recently that people could learned to read to themselves.

What do you think- this internalisation of your commentary about the world-
does this correspond to the development of consciousness?

Dave Pape
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