From: Wade T.Smith (wade_smith@harvard.edu)
Date: Sun 03 Nov 2002 - 16:29:59 GMT
On Sunday, November 3, 2002, at 10:29 , Richard Brodie wrote:
> Such experiments are performed daily in every high school in the world.
Ah, well, of course you'd say that, but, what does the post-hoc
processing of reality tell us about the mechanisms? Nothing. Since we
can invoke whatever ghost in the machine reason for things we want to,
and memesinthemind is a ghost in the machine explanation in this way.
Once you've sat at the altar of memesinthemind, of course every example
from daily life is a corroboration. But it's just specious flim-flam.
What I was asking for was data, arrived at in an experimental setting,
with strict controls, and all variables controlled.
There ain't a way, IMHO, to conduct such an experiment ethically.
- Wade
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