Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id TAA16366 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 9 May 2000 19:21:15 +0100 Message-ID: <3918116E.7F949155@mediaone.net> Date: Tue, 09 May 2000 14:23:58 +0100 From: Chuck Palson <cpalson@mediaone.net> X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (WinNT; I) X-Accept-Language: en To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: Central questions of memetics References: <NBBBIIDKHCMGAIPMFFPJMEJOEMAA.richard@brodietech.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Richard Brodie wrote:
> Chuck wrote:
>
> <<First, what does it mean to say "not
> because they are 'good ideas'?" but that nevertheless "push our evolutionary
> buttons and force us to pay attention to them." Do you mean those in the
> media
> who manufacture stories on the nightly news that either simply exaggerate
> certain dangers or even manufacture them?>>
>
> Successful news producers know what sells to their audience. It's easy to
> recognize a "nightly news" story versus an "NPR" story. No evil intention is
> necessary, only the recognition that certain news items are more interesting
> to the audience than others, and the audiences are drown to the stations
> that provide those type of stories. "Usefulness" is not a particular factor.
You just said in a posting today that all memes have at least a little
usefulness, so how can you say its "not a particular factor." Perhaps you mean
that: 1) it's not useful to you. Presumably you don't watch the evening news in
the US. 2) You are applying a meaning of the word "useful" that you think
*should* be used.
As for my use of the word useful or utility, it applies not only to those
behaviors which offer solutions to physical problems (like cars for traveling
distances), but for social uses. I include the latter because social
arrangements are part of the toolkit of survival that is necessary for humans to
exist. That definition implies an important critique of the meme approach:
context can be very broad and very complex and hard to study, but without
understanding all of it, the significance of individual behaviors or "memes", if
you will, cannot be understood. It looks to me like the attractiveness of
memetics is due to its simplicity -- which it gets by largely ignoring context.
That, I think, is what you mean when you say:
"The problem is, the definition of "utility" needs to be bent so far to
explain the prevalence of things like ever-growing government bureaucracies,
astrology, chain letters, and fashion trends that some people are unsatisfied
with that explanation."
I agree that many might be dissatisfied. Everyone will say they are against
bureacracy when it is serving someone else's needs. But they may bitterly
complain if they don't get served right on time. We are stuck with a lot of
necessary evils along with a lot of necessary goods, like it or not. If the
simplicity of the meme idea sells books, then who am I to say that it's wrong
-- for selling books. But it looks to me like the world is a lot more complex
than a theory of memes could encompass.
>
> Sensationalism, for the masses, tends to be, as are stories about
> celebrities, disasters, scandals, and so on... very primal interests.
> Memes and viruses are not the same thing. Mind viruses are larger
> superorganisms. Adherents to religions tend to share some memes, which are
> components of these superorganisms, but the meme is not the virus.
>
And yet it is compared to viruses - and infection.
>
> Richard Brodie richard@brodietech.com
> http://www.memecentral.com/rbrodie.htm
>
> ===============================================================
> 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
===============================================================
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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