Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id NAA03775 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 15 Jun 2000 13:02:00 +0100 From: "Joseph 1" <neohuman@goldenfuture.net> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: Imitation or transmission? Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 07:58:59 -0400 Message-ID: <001c01bfd6c1$17220180$13281e8c@ultracom.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 8.5, Build 4.71.2173.0 In-Reply-To: <20000615012655.45093.qmail@hotmail.com> Importance: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Montie S. wrote:
> Studies by security regulators have found that most day traders (75%)
> don't turn a profit. This, get rich quick, meme was engineered
> by the firms for the firms.
But did they deliberately sit down and say "Let's come up with an idea that
will spread like wildfire; what if we associated day-trading with getting
rich quick?" I submit that the association happened spontaneously rather
than deliberately, and thus wouldn't count as an example of memetic
engineering. What was engineered?
> Also, have you checked out Information Warfare? The following is a
> pretty good description of what IW is:
> "Information warfare is the offensive and defensive use of information
> and information systems to deny, exploit, corrupt, or destroy, an
> adversary's information, information-based processes, information systems,
> and computer-based networks while protecting one's own. Such actions are
> designed to achieve advantages over military or
> business adversaries."(Dr. Ivan Goldberg)
> I believe that this is very similar to what is called memetic
> engineering although it could be argued that psychological
> warfare is a much
> better fit with what has been defined for memetic engineering. Do you
> agree, disagree?
While I think that memetic engineering could (and eventually will) be used
as a weapon (a more sophisticated version of the Psyops of the Vietnam era),
I don't think it fits your definition. IW, as Dr. Goldberg describes it,
seems to involve attack against information-transmission systems, rather
than the introduction of new and deliberately-created memes.
Joseph
===============================================================
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
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jun 15 2000 - 13:02:52 BST