From: Dace (edace@earthlink.net)
Date: Mon 26 May 2003 - 22:06:03 GMT
> From: "rhiggins7" <rhiggins7@cox.net>
>
> > Date: Sat, 24 May 2003 12:47:29 -0700
> > From: "Dace" <edace@earthlink.net>
> >
> > > From: "Wade T. Smith" <wade.t.smith@verizon.net>
> > >
> > >
> > > This would seem to be a proposal that all memes are false.
> >
> > Not necessarily. A meme could be true by accident. What you
> unconsciously
> > wish to believe may turn out to be correct. Also, memes can include
works
> > of art which, even if they're fictional, may express a deeper truth.
> Memes
> > can exploit our need to gain a sense of wholeness and other positive
> needs.
> > The main thing is that memes pass from mind to mind under their own
power,
> > whereas ideas pass among us via our conscious power of reason.
> >
>
> Is this belief held by this memetic community at large?
I'm expressing my own view. Got a problem with that?
> Ideas can't be
> memes and visa versa?
Ideas can certainly be memes and vice versa.
> the disitinction here seems extremely arbitrary and
> contrived to propogatte an "Us vs Them" belief structure within the
> community.
It's not the least bit arbitrary. Not all information flows memetically.
Much of it flows according to standard models of information transfer,
developed and refined over many years by social scientists. To claim that
all shared ideas are memes is to defy conventional science. This is why
memetics is often rejected or simply ignored. To avoid confrontation with
the well-established science of information transfer, we must define exactly
which ideas are memetic and which are not, i.e. which ideas actively
replicate and which ones are passively replicated through standard means.
> And why would the fact that a Meme is true or false have any
> impact on how it is replicates?
If an idea depends on reason to be transmitted from one person to another,
then it plays no active role in its transmission and is therefore not a
meme. But it will be "true," at least relative to an idea that conflicts
with reason.
> Only the "Belief" in the truethfullness of a
> meme will impact its viralents. Many of our most deepest held beleifs
about
> science and reason are essencially subjective memes but we believe them to
> be true.
I agree. A meme's virulence depends in part on how many people believe in
it. If "everyone" believes something irrational, you're a lot more likely
to abandon reason and believe in it as well. A lot of "scientific" beliefs
are little more than materialist dogma.
> More disturbing in this post is the implied belief that somehow "it
> is those awfull lying Memes that supress Our great Ideas from changing the
> world".
Can you explain why you find this disturbing? If memes are indeed
responsible for the persistence of irrational beliefs, wouldn't memetics
benefit us by helping us identify which of our beliefs are memes?
> I wonder if anyones got a good Idea on how to counter this Meme.
Chill out, dude. We're just having a conversation here.
Ted
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
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