> Alex wrote:
>
> memetics focuses on the development of the culture and the motion of
> the particles that make it up (memes) within a given ecological niche
> (humanity). There's no intrinsic reason that those memes cannot be
> hosted by non-human entities.
> **********************************************************************
>
> You probably weren't around for the "memetic nature of dogs" thread.
>
> But I think there *is* an intrinsic reason why memes can't be hosted by
> non human entities.
>
> So far, there are no non human entities that can transmit memes with the
> level of sophistication necessary to build a culture.
>
> I know about the signing apes and the dolphins pushing buttons, but
> these (IMHO) don't count.
The first example sounds like "unsupported by hardware". I recall a
report of someone who duplicated the effort in teaching language to
those apes with a Down's Syndrome patient. [Fuzzy reference...about 5
years after the first major successes of that example.]
The Down's Syndrome was rendered irrelevant. Any so-called "mental
retardation" became undetectable, permanently.
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/ Towards the conversion of data into information....
/
/ Kenneth Boyd
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