Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id PAA13821 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sun, 18 Jun 2000 15:31:38 +0100 Message-Id: <4.3.1.0.20000616165753.01df8c40@popmail.mcs.net> X-Sender: aaron@popmail.mcs.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3.1 Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2000 09:28:33 -0500 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk From: Aaron Lynch <aaron@mcs.net> Subject: RE: Cons and Facades In-Reply-To: <20000616191617.AAA9640@camailp.harvard.edu@[205.240.180.7] > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
At 03:16 PM 6/16/00 -0400, Wade T.Smith wrote:
>Joseph 1 made this comment not too long ago --
>
> >But it's only because of a possible misunderstanding, rather than
> >anything inherent in memetics per se.
>
>This possible misunderstanding could, as Aaron (I think) is vigorously
>attempting to avoid, lead the general scientific community from taking
>memetics seriously.
>
>Right now, memetics does have, IMHO, a Barnum-like atmosphere, with a few
>untrepidatious visitors to the booths who are hoping to see what really
>happens behind the curtain.
>
>The main problem being, science has no curtains.
>
>- Wade
Wade,
I think that many "street smart" outsiders, along with long-time
memeticists who have taken a hard look beneath the surface of things can
see the Barnum-like atmosphere most clearly. The question is not so much
whether it exists, but why, and what can be done about it.
Still another possible cause is that all the attention memetics pays to
competitive idea transmission can lead high rates of devious methods of
self-promotion and of deflecting attention from colleagues. Some may even
conclude that devious self-promotion and deflecting attention from
colleagues are the memetically brilliant things to do. Yet I don't think
those who have reached such conclusions have always been careful about what
they wished for: there are works available but often deflected from view
that would have effectively defended memetics from such critics as Gould,
Pinker, Orr, Gardner, and others. And many skeptical, critical scientists
react poorly when they sense devious self-promotion. Street smart and
sophisticated non-scientists can have similar reactions.
Those who have invested their efforts in honest work honestly promoted have
a natural self-interest in opposing the spread of devious self-promotions
and devious attention deflections, while those who have invested their
efforts more directly in self-promotion and devious self-promotion have a
natural interest in maintaining acceptance and camouflage for those ways. I
would also argue that an enlightened self-interest on the part of most
people involved in memetics favors an elimination of the Barnum-like
atmosphere and its causes, for reasons relating to how seriously memetics
is taken. The image memetics has in the broader scientific community also
depends to a great degree on how effectively the Method in our field
winnows out the false. That, in turn, also depends upon how effectively
cons and facades are rejected.
The more specific ideas of Machiavellian memes, Machiavellian intelligence,
and adversative propagation be seen as suggesting that devious
self-promotion and attention deflection are simply the brilliant things to
do. Here again, the problem is that consequences are not viewed in a long
enough term to see how the scientific community will react when expected
work is deflected from view and devious methods become palpable. The
relative lack or absence of curtains in science causes more problems for
Machiavellian or adversative methods in science than in, say, business,
politics, and personal affairs. Making matters worse is that early moves
toward Machiavellian and adversative self-promotion may have created an
environment in which newcomers seeking to establish their careers may feel
a competitive pressure to be as Machiavellian or adversative those who went
before. Certain cons and facades have apparently been indeed imitated in
recent years, which gives critics even more ability to characterize our
entire field as a sham.
One might point to the history of Darwin and Wallace as "proof" that
Machiavellianism prevails, but that would be a mistake. Darwin was able to
make a case for delaying Wallace's paper based on the fact that Darwin had
done far more work and had produced a much more developed theoretical
framework. Both in the judgement of contemporaries and of history, it was
the greater work and achievement of Darwin that most argued for giving the
preponderance of credit to Darwin instead of Wallace. Darwin was able to
make a good case for giving credit where credit was due, rather than dumbly
following a program of conferring credit based on priority of arrival to
the printed page. If Wallace had arrived in the late 1850s with a more
developed theoretical framework backed by extensive observations--enough to
fill a book, for instance--we would probably have been referring to
Wallacian evolution rather than Dawinian evolution today. Still,
misconstruing the principles being invoked in Darwin's time as little more
than Machiavellian self-promotion of one work over an equivalent rival work
can lead some to take simplistically Machiavellian approaches today. Once
again, that can produce cons, facades, and the resulting Barnum-like
atmosphere that harm the propagation of memetic ideas and the process
(Method) of memetics research.
Regarding self-helpishness (or indeed selfish-helpishness), I should point
out that I became more explicitly self-helpish in "The Millennium Thought
Contagion," which was published in the November/December 1999 Skeptical
Inquirer. That article offered advice about how people could think
skeptically, critically, and scientifically about those terrifying Y2K
myths that were going around in the late 1990s. There are ways to teach
people to help themselves think more critically, skeptically, or
scientifically. These particular forms of self-help are often easier to
handle in a manner consistent with scientific methods than are many
varieties of self-help being mass marketed. A Barnum-like atmosphere also
pervades the self-help industry. As a result, many scientists and critical
thinkers react as if they had hype-detectors activating when they encounter
self-helpish material. Therefore, such material needs to be handled very
carefully to avoid being seen as just another (anticipated) piece of hype.
--Aaron Lynch
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