> A courageous attempt indeed, (Tim), despite the fact that I tend toward a
> cognitive psychological treatment (so that we can perchance one day
> actually attribute values to your key variables and functions). For
> example, your Vn's might actually represent the strength of synapses that
> lead to different stored memories in the brain, based on frequency of
> utilization.
Quite true. But perhaps I should have stressed in the introduction that I
think it is valuable to try to think of the problem in these sorts of
terms, regardless of whether those terms, themselves, turn out to be valid.
> I'm confused, however, by two sections in particular:
>
> 1) If we first
> >imagine that the vector m has contained within it a catalog of all memes
in
> >I{m} such that each MEMEX has a corresponding numeric value, such as: 1=
> >MEMEAARDVARK 2= MEMEBEAVER 3=MEMECAMEL , and so on
>
> What is the difference between what you're calling a meme, and an
> abstraction of aardvark or beaver or camel? By abstraction, I'm
referring
> to the common characteristics that allow me to classify Fido the
pekingese
> and Buddy the german shepherd as "dogs".
There may be very little difference, or a possibly great deal. You may
have noticed I completely avoided the issue of "What is a meme?" and went
instead to the role of a memetic vector in transmitting the meme. This was
for a reason. One can talk about heredity quite accurately without any
knowledge of what a gene is. One doesn't need to know that a gene is
composed of DNA in order to put breeding for traits into quantifiable
terms.
> 2) Perhaps more to the point, it might do us some good to show the
> >relationship between beliefs, memories and the environment of a vector
as a
> >series of functions.
>
> A series of functions -- probably discrete functions -- might indeed be
> necessary for this. However, why are you distinguishing beliefs from
> memories?
Belief is probably not a good word for this. (too charged) What I am
trying to express here are those ideas that are actively in use or tagged
for immediate application to a given problem. As opposed to ideas that are
stored for reference. Such as the difference between <Christianity> to a
Christian (belief) and to a scholar of comparative religions (memory).
> What _is_ a belief? Does a belief differ from a meme? Or might a belief
> be a meme that a) was stored in memory, and b) took hold in the sense
that
> it will affect the vector's processing of further information / the
> vector's behavior?
Exactly. Beliefs are that subset of memes that, when a part of the vectors
A{x}, re-adjust the Vx and Rx values of other surrounding memes.
(And no, I do not feel that all memes belong in this subset.)
> Perhaps RX--"the factor at work in selecting a MEMEX from the
> environment to form I{m}, in much the same role that VX played in the
> selecting of the set A{m}" -- is actually a product of the web of beliefs
> held by m, i.e. of how such beliefs are hierarchized within m's memory.
I agree. And this is the point where, as Eric noted, the math gets really
ugly.
> I hope you find these comments useful.
Quite. I had stopped working on this project because I was having a hard
time finding anyone to bounce these ideas off. I am amazed and grateful
for all the response.
-Prof. Tim