Oh dear, and I thought it was another thingie by Dawkins, whereas this
is even better : the author even posts here. And he has even succeeded
in making me laugh with a Zen one-line:
Eric : don't understand Zen, man. It'll take me at least 10 years,
Richard : or 20 if you're in a hurry...
Now, of course, I checked AND bookmarked Richard's URL, and I have a question
for Richard now :
Why isn't the whole of your book online !?
Calvin has made ALL of his texts available online. Kevin Kelly has
"Out of Control", Joel de Rosnay's "The Macroscope" is on PCP.
Many of Dennett's essays are on the Tufts university database for
his students but are accessible as well.
Really, do you still need the money ? I've read just a few minutes ago
that it has been on the bestseller list at Amazon for months.
I'll buy it anyway.
>Level 1: monkey. Acting on instincts. No real thought
>Level 2: normal human. Thought, reason, faith. Consistent set of
>mutually supporting meme's.
>Level 3: "meme space flexing on the fly" Switching between different
>contradictory meme spaces. Knowing both sides of the issue. Seeing
>past the duality. Embracing the contradiction. Using's meme and not
>being infected by them. "Higher Intellectual Center"
Hmmm, two meme sets can appear contradictory if you don't have the hypotheses
that can link them into a coherent meta-system.
Is the knowledge of such a meme a > level 3 meme ?
>There, saved you some trouble.
No, no you got me more interested in it.
>> So where does it lead to ? Which conclusions do you reach about the
>> universe, mathematics, free will, etc.. if you go on expanding you own
>> meme-set.
>
>Hold your horses, eh? One topic at a time!
It's all linked. Consciousness linked to brain linked to other parts
of the body. Only after much time is developed a metaphor-cum-proto-science-
cum-science which enables us to say "how about putting a meme space in
another medium, after all this body dies soon". And so some start thinking
about it. The thing is, if you don't have you body now, you can't think
about it,
because we haven't gone round to machine uploading yet. So it's all linked.
>Depends what you mean by everything... do you mean all knowledge? Yes
>(I could look it up, but arn't there three? Each must be held to be
>true:
>1) A is A,
>2) A or NotA, (either A is true or A is not true)
>3) ummm... guess I've forgotten.
>
>Anyway, it is #2 that level 3 transends.
I thought there were 7 in Mathematics (current maths ?)
Anybody can confirm/infirm this ?
>Ummm... I'll probably have something to say about your view in another
>week when I finish "The way of Zen" by Allen Watts... till then, you can
>go read my "Ripples on the pond of Life" message.
Extremely interesting stuff to which I replied as well.
Cheers
Yash.