From: Dace (edace@earthlink.net)
Date: Tue 18 Mar 2003 - 00:55:03 GMT
> From: Keith Henson <hkhenson@rogers.com>
>
> At 04:29 PM 15/03/03 -0800, Dace wrote:
> > > From: "Alan Patrick" <a.patrick@btinternet.com>
> > >
> > > My thought was about memes that are "emperor's old clothes" memes, ie
> > > that are still in situ even though their basis for existence is
provably
> > > eroded - do they work mainly by:
> > > (i) having strong self-reinforcing elements, and/or conversely are
good at
> > > preventing entry of new memes for long periods
> >
> >Right.
> >
> > > (ii) "perverting" the vision of the meme-carrier so that he/she cannot
see
> > > reality
> >
> >Memes can't pervert their hosts. Perversion is strictly psychological.
> >People are perverted, not memes.
>
> I don't see the above as consistent. It is close to saying a string of
DNA
> in a virus can't pervert the functions of a cell and make the cell (and
> consequently you) sick.
Hi, Keith.
Let's say you come down with a cold. Three weeks later you're infected with
the exact same rhinovirus that got you before. Now that your immune system
recognizes this particular virus, it quickly disposes of the germ before any
harm is done. Let's say you were in favor of the war against Vietnam. By
the time it was over you had learned your lesson. Thirty years later you
were opposed to another aggressive war before the first shot was even fired.
If you're immune to national narcissism, the memes that carry its message
can't infect you.
> >Memes just promote themselves (and thereby
> >crowd out competitors).
>
> This is close to saying computer viruses only replicate and don't cause
> harm. Certainly *some* of them (like the last really fast spreading one)
> don't have a destructive payload and the damage they do is mostly related
> to clogging the nets and denying services. But some will erase your hard
> drive.
Again, you have to be willing to let the virus in. If you think that by
opening an attachment to an email you will win a fabulous prize, then the
virus will gain power over your computer. The perversion lies in the person
who lets the virus in (and the person who created it) not the virus itself,
which simply does its job.
> >Mental causation goes on at both the memetic and
> >personal levels. In fact, it's carried on at three levels: memes,
people,
> >and groups of people. Each level has automonous, causal power, and each
> >level can become pathological and dangerous.
>
> While I agree that there are levels, I don't see memes as having
autonomous
> power. DNA information only effects the world when it is in an
environment
> where it can be replicated and transcribed. Memes have to be in a brain
> before they can cause real world effects.
Genes are self-promoting, and so are memes.
> >As Dennett has finally
> >realized, the attempt to use memetics as a way of "explaining" culture
> >without resort to conscious agency can only discredit the emerging field
of
> >study.
>
> I never realized that anyone was trying to use memes to explain
> culture.
My understanding is that memetics is intended to provide a scientific
account of human culture. I think it can indeed do so but only in the
context of psychology, including group psychology.
> Culture is the sum of information that is passed from person to
> person and generation to generation by non-genetics means. Memetics is a
> way to understand the differential survival of parts of that information,
> but culture itself is explained by its usefulness to genetic
> survival. (Try surviving without even chipped rocks!)
Not being a genetic reductionist, I can't agree with this.
> > > (iii)a "natural half life" exists for dominant old memes and they have
to
> > > fall below a certain strength before they are dislodgeable
> >
> >"Half life" is a chemical concept and has no bearing on biological
> >evolution. So, it probably doesn't make a very good analogy for
memetics.
>
> It is more a mathematical term, and if you can graph the decline of a
meme,
> it would make sense to use it to describe the point where a meme that was
> 100 percent accepted had fallen to 50% accepted.
The difference is that a radioactive particle is guaranteed to degrade by
half in a certain amount of time, whereas a meme's duration is open-ended.
> >Incidentally, the resilience of not only useless but actively harmful
memes
> >is the only way to study the subject scientifically. This is because the
> >existence of helpful memes can be ascribed to the ordinary attributes of
> >ideas, which passively replicate on the basis of their value from one
person
> >to the next. The point of memes is that they're "selfish." They
> >self-replicate, just like genes. When an idea that's clearly harmful is
> >also impossible to eradicate, then we know we're dealing with a meme.
>
> I agree with you that actively harmful memes (hurting humans or their
> genes) are extremely useful in the study of the subject. But I don't
think
> it is the only way to study the subject. The spread of useful new memes
> and harmless ones also provides examples. Take the meme that stomach
> ulcers are caused by Helicobacter pylori. It was difficult for that one
to
> get widely accepted because it ran into the established (though
> unjustified) meme that stress caused ulcers.
We don't need the memetics model to account for the recognition that ulcers
are caused by bacteria. Someone had an idea, which he or she communicated
to someone else. Since the idea turned out to be true, now lots of people
believe it. No need for "selfish" units of culture propagating themselves.
But the prior belief-- that ulcers are caused by stress-- is not only false
but harmful. The extreme difficulty of uprooting this belief can be
ascribed to the autonomy and resilience of the belief itself. Of course, if
bad ideas are memes, then every idea is potentially memetic. That the
bacterial explanation of ulcers is a meme can only be demonstrated
indirectly.
> An earlier example was the difficulty germ theory had in displacing the
> previous ideas of "bad air" being the cause of disease.
>
> The fact that a meme is incredible useful to its host does not prevent it
> from being "selfish" in the "displacing others" sense Dawkins established
> in "Selfish Gene."
Agreed.
Ted
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