re: #630 Hhar

Sal1: because you have it wrong. If you chart the lunar orbit, and know that it’s time for it to appear in your cloudless sky, and it’s not there, something has happened to the moon itself, not just your perception of it. And, as I said before, there had be a damned good explanation if it looks triangular or square. The in-itself whole cannot contradict the for-us part, or else our long-evolved perceptions would be undependable - but they ARE dependable; they got us here.

Hhar1: Sure, but a perception of a thing isn’t the thing. That’s why we have words like “illusion” and “hallucination” and “mistake”. It is baffling that you cannot see this simple fact.

Sal2: You should read JJ Gibson on perceptual affordances. We’re not talking about dosed observers here, and illusions are mistakes of interpretatiopn, not perception, which doesn’t fly when we’re talking about whether or not the fucking moon is shining in a clear night sky; sheesh! Hint: you can’t grasp absent straws.

Sal1: I have. I have already mentioned how ostensibly dissimilar things such as language, music, gestures, visual arts, religious and political systems, etc., can all be understood as adhering to the same rules of mutation and propagation. And memes are as real as words. If you doubt their reality, try communicating on LGF without them.

Hhar1: No, that’s argument by assertion again. language, music, gestures etc. have all been recognised to be learned, transmitted and changed for a looooong time. Lumping ‘em all together: show me the value.

Sal2: Better understanding. What has NOT been previously understood about all those things is that they are tokens of a single type, and follow the same rules. And there will certainly be more. The discipline is young yet. What did we have out of evolution by 1889?

Sal1: : Moving your goal posts again, I see. First you say that I didn’t provide a defiition; now, when I reiterate it yet again, you say that it doesn’t matrter that I did.

Hhar1: I have consistently asked for an empirical definition. You came up with one: it did not prove to be a unitary entity. next.

Sal2: It did indeed allow for the distinction between memes and non-memes (meaning), and as far as memes and memeplexes go, I have Beethovened you to death over 4 separable notes. No one but you and a creationist shill with ulterior motives will contend that example.

Sal1: That’s because you are synthetically myopic. You, for some bizarre reason, cannot figure out what value it is to unite various phenomena under a common rubric. Like biology and botany under genetics. Or relativity and quantum mechanics under a GUTOE.

Hhar1: Yeah, and you are a misunderstood Einstein. Or something. Alas for the world that it has such lumps as myself in it.

That’s an ad hominem non-answer. What’s wrong; your snipper broke?

Sal1: You were the one who was maintaining that there are as many african bushmen who get woodies off spying giraffe necks as there were teenyboppers who recognized dadadadum! from Roll Over Beethoven!

Hhar1: Well, that was certainly an interesting bit of creativity!

sal2: It was pointing out yet another of your manifest nonsensical absurdities in a supposedly jocular manner.