Re: virus: Re: Rationality (meme make-up)
Dave Pape (davepape@dial.pipex.com)
Fri, 14 Mar 1997 18:51:16 GMT
At 09:30 14/03/97 +0000, Tony wrote:
>In message <199703140722.XAA16400@web2.calweb.com>, Lee Daniel
>Crocker <lcrocker@calweb.com> writes
> Dave Pape wrote
>>> >Someone, in the last couple of weeks, said that no meme cannot be broken
>>> >down further. Do you agree? Surely there must be some fundamental level
>>> >for a singular meme, otherwise, meme-complex and meme would be universally
>>> >interchangeable.
>>>
>>> Someone answer this, because it's been confusing me for ages as well... is
>>> there an atomic meme? I'm kind of thinking no... but then I spin off into a
>>> fractally recursive explanation wormhole.
>>
>>Seems pretty obvious to me: a neural pattern that causes a single-nerve
>>stimulus to produce a single muscle contraction is the "atomic" meme,
>>from which all others all built. Of course, it has to be an acquired
>>pattern, not hard-wired.
> Yes but there are random quantum threshold fluctuations at
>all the synapses so we can never know the position and momentum of
>a single nerve stimulus without an inherent uncertainty.
>
> Seriously though, I think spinning off into a fractally
>recursive explanation is a good way of putting it. I use meme-
>complex to make explicit what I always mean implicitly when I use
>the term meme.
And I'm into the idea that everything we'd normally call a meme is in fact a
fuzzy-edged ecological colony of idea things. Single nerve stimulus mapping
to single muscle ending sounds massively unlikely to me... with the human
nervous system being as complex as it is, I reckon the chances of any input
neuron mapping neatly to any single output neuron are vanishingly small.
Dave Pape
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