Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id PAA18600 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 16 Mar 2000 15:18:15 GMT From: Robin Faichney <robin@faichney.demon.co.uk> Organization: Reborn Technology To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: Some questions Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 14:12:56 +0000 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.0.21] Content-Type: text/plain References: <20000316001735.2479.qmail@hotmail.com> Message-Id: <00031614370900.00561@faichney> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On Thu, 16 Mar 2000, Diana Stevenson wrote:
>Hello again - thanks to everyone who replied!
>
>Bill wrote:
><I don't know much about postmodernism, but my impression --
>please correct me if I am wrong -- is that in postmodernism one
>story is as good as another. In memetics, some stories are more
>equal. ;-) They survive.>
>
>Well yes, but all stories that are around today (like all genes) have
>survived. I'm not an expert either, but I think postmodernism is about
>allowing different (and apparently conflicting) stories to co-exist without
>trying constantly to boost one and put the others down.
I don't know whether that's necessarily postmodernist, but it's something I'm
*very* keen on. Is an explanation at the level of atoms inherently superior to
one at the level of molecules? Or inherent inferior? It's neither -- though,
depending on the context, one explanatory level will usually be more useful
than others. Likewise the "we have or at least can get control" and the "it's
all memes anyway, whatever" stories are not mutually exclusive. We have/are
selves, with some degree of self control, and that's very, very important for
us to acknowledge. But at the same time the concept of the self is a meme, and
an extremely successful one, that is "caught" early in life, and I'm convinced
that a person who had never interacted with any other person, would not have
it. The "real self" thing and the "absolutist memetics" thing look at the
world from very different viewpoints, and to say one is true -- or at least
useful -- is not to deny the other, at all. Naive realism -- the insistence
that there is only one valid explanatory framework -- is a memeplex whose
time is just about up, at least among "thinking people" (like us!).
>Could the evolving memes be responsible for the widespread "ostrich effect"
>in our response to global warming? Our species is threatened with
>extinction and it should be occupying the best minds on the planet, but we
>are much more interested in other things. Are the memes distracting us so
>they can be rid of us more quickly:-)
>
>Unfortunately it's money that's doing the memetic engineering: the oil
>companies have been blocking the development of electric cars for the last
>20 years, even though these are surely more "fit" for today's environment
>than conventional cars. I feel that any attempt to measure the fitness of a
>meme would have to control for the money and status behind its promotion -
>or the lack thereof.
There's a fascinating new analysis of this kind of phenomenon, in which these
dirty (pollution and tricks) corporations and others of their ilk are viewed as
living memetic creatures that have recently come to dominate life on earth, to
the serious detriment of both humans and many other species. They are called
Big Bodies. Have a look at http://www.nancho.net/bigmed2000/ Of course this
view is not "the absolute truth", because there's no such thing, but it could
be a very useful perspective.
-- Robin Faichney===============================This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing) see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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