From: Bruce Howlett (brucehowlett@northnet.com.au)
Date: Sat 23 Nov 2002 - 03:12:57 GMT
Exactly the point I thought I was making. Correlation does not equal causality. But the placebo effect does exist. I was suggesting there was a memetic process involved. Something like: memetic infection causes belief, belief causes behaviour (goose fat), belief also causes increased immune system activity, believer recovers, believer reinforces and retransmits meme. At least this has more rationality than most religious memes where the behaviour is highly dependant on imagination.
BTW, power could be objectified, just needs appropriate criteria: eg: rate of recovery of patient with placebo (belief) v's without placebo. Definitely harder to measure in a religious scenario, maybe rate of conversions, or the devoutness of converts (could be measured by the number of resultant religious behaviours).
Regards,
Bruce Howlett
PO Box 1103
Armidale NSW 2350
email: brucehowlett@northnet.com.au
phone: 61 2 6775 5542
mobile: 0409 711 303
----- Original Message -----
From: Wade T.Smith
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Sent: Saturday, November 23, 2002 1:29 PM
Subject: Re: memetics-digest V1 #1215
On Friday, November 22, 2002, at 09:02 , Bruce Howlett wrote:
> What is relevant to memetics here is the power of a belief.
What sort of power did the catholic missionaries have that infected
entire continents?
Was it really the power of a belief?
What is it about proselytizing religions that moves them into and among
a populace?
> remedy for chest colds, consisting of a slathering of goose fat on the
> chest covered with brown paper, bandaged on for 3 days. Sounds like
> torture to me but she swore it worked.
Most chest colds will dissipate over three days, from natural
immunities. The placebo effect has, in several studies, been eliminated
as a cause.
The sustain over time of a belief and its distribution is what is
relevant to memetics. Power is not a useful descriptor, since it is a
physical property and needs to be measured rather than deduced.
- Wade
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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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