Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id WAA01259 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 22 May 2000 22:15:16 +0100 From: "Richard Brodie" <richard@brodietech.com> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: Central questions of memetics Date: Mon, 22 May 2000 14:13:07 -0700 Message-ID: <NBBBIIDKHCMGAIPMFFPJEELMENAA.richard@brodietech.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2911.0) Importance: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2919.6600 In-Reply-To: <39203C76.A6296F1B@mediaone.net> Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Chuck wrote:
<<Yes,
people do hold beliefs on the basis of their _apparent_ usefulness, and most
beliefs in an ongoing society _are_ accurate or the society would collapse
pretty fast. It is up to the scientist to figure out how these beliefs are
useful because people can't always make that conscious -- because it often
does
them no good to be able to verbalize it.>>
Do you really believe that people consciously choose their beliefs on the
basis of their apparent usefulness? Even if true, which I don't think, you
still need a mechanism to present competing ideas to people so they can make
a selection.
I think most beliefs people have are not consciously chosen but rather
learned by conditioning or through life experience. Therapists and self-help
gurus spend their lives trying to disabuse people of beliefs that are
specifically NOT useful.
<<As far as I can figure, it is the usefulness itself that makes it easy to
spread
ideas or behaviors. Convince someone that a new invention will be useful to
them
and it spreads.>>
Marketers know that people buy based on wants, not needs. Making a new
invention sound sexy will do much more to sell it than making it sound
useful. Beyond that, how do you convince someone? I thought you were
asserting that no convincing was necessary, that people would beat a path to
your door the moment you came up with a useful idea. They don't, of course.
Ideas spread when they are packaged so as to attract people's attention.
<<Dawkins makes the
same mistake you are making by judging that religions aren't useful because
God
doesn't exist.>>
You clearly have not read my book. I don't make that mistake at all; in
fact, I devoted an entire chapter to not making that mistake.
<< To say Hitler's solutions were morally wrong misses the point -
people went for his suggestions because they had immediate use value --
however
morally repugnant they were to us.>>
People adopted his ideas because ADOPTING the ideas relieved pain/provided
pleasure. This is very, very different from asserting that the ideas
themselves were useful. Memes spread because they push people's
psychological buttons.
> [CP]
> <<You haven't kept up with the stats. It has changed very rapidly.>>
>
> "I haven't kept up with the stats." A brash statement. In 1995 over-55 Web
> users made up only 5% of total users versus 21% of the overall North
> American population. Now they make up 12%. As I said, they are the slowest
> group to adopt. Every other age group was already well represented on the
> Internet in 1995.
>
<<But I am talking about only very recently. Their use has indeed soared. I
can't
remember the source on that, though.>>
Let me say it one more time. THEY ARE THE SLOWEST GROUP TO ADOPT. If every
single senior started using the Internet tomorrow, they STILL will have been
the slowest group to adopt.
[RB]
> You're making my point. It's the religion that survived, not the
individuals
> involved. Christianity is a virus of the mind and a very successful one.
> It's ability to morph while maintaining core elements and evangelism made
it
> successful.
<<"It's"?? >>
Notice that you copied my mistake, using "It's" instead of "Its." Did you do
that because it was useful?
<<Religion is made up of actual people with brains that discriminate and
compute. Religion is made into an abstract entity by those who study it.
They
can do this because people make stable arrangements with each other that
persist
through time. If you asked a Catholic up until - say 1960 - if they want to
confession, they would say yes. That arrangement lasted for perhaps
centuries
and an outside observer would use "it" to characterize it in shorthand,
meaning
that it was a stable institution that probably all Catholics participated
in.
Today that institution has become far less important (the ones that go often
travel to another parish where the priest doesn't know them). So it was the
individuals of the flock that found the ritual of confession no longer
answered
a need.>>
I'm not sure what your point is. Presumably the need that Confession was
meeting is being met in some other way now. So part of the memetic glue of
the religion is gone and unless it is replaced we should expect the numbers
of orthodox Catholics to go down. I know that the numbers of priests and
nuns has seriously diminished.
[RB]
> Utter nonsense. America is full of maladapted, unhappy, dysfunctional
people
> who don't die any sooner than anyone else.
<<Mystified by what this is responding to.>>
Responding to your assertion that a belief is desirable if it leads to
survival.
[RB]
> Consciously choosing beliefs is what I said I taught, not perfectly
rational
> ways to make decisions. I think of my mind as a computer whose program is
> the set of beliefs, attitudes,
<<I don't think anyone has yet even figured out how to program in attitudes
(which are what define the goals from moment to moment). Just a minor detail
I
thought might be useful to bring up for the future.>>
It's a huge part of cognitive therapy and the self-help movement. People
have been doing it for decades. NLP is also largely about that. So is
hazing, boot camp, law school...
Richard Brodie richard@brodietech.com
http://www.memecentral.com/rbrodie.htm
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