re: #586 Salamantis

What you have just furnished is an example of differential memetic mutation in the minds of different recipients; congratulations! It is precisely because of both intentional alterations and inadvertent misapprehensions that memes evolve.

Or do not even exist as empirically defineable entities. You see, you assume they exist as real causally efficaceous units, without proof, just by assertion. But when I ask you to give an empirically defineable example, and you boldly choose one, and I show you that it isn’t one unit, you say “see! That’s what memes do!” You have just generated a completely untestable framework, more akin to religious dogma than science.

If a night-blind person only sees a silver smear where another person with excellent night sight can point out patterns of light and darkness, does this mean either that the moon does not exist, or that there are multiple moons? The same goes with the tone deaf and the perfect pitch person hearing the same musical phrase.

Stunning example of category error. The moon is not a subjective experience. Nor is a defined musical phrase, played on a given instrument with defined timing. These things are empirically defineable. A meme is, as you note, a subjective experience which is why, as a causal unitary entity (note those qualifications: you have stumbled on them before), simply doesn’t exist. I agree: memetics isn’t science. It is confused nonsense.