Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id SAA14598 (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 18:35:39 +0100 X-Authentication-Warning: marple.umd.edu: debivort owned process doing -bs Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2000 13:33:54 -0400 (EDT) From: "Lawrence H. de Bivort" <debivort@umd5.umd.edu> X-Sender: debivort@marple.umd.edu To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: RE: Cons and Facades In-Reply-To: <4.3.1.0.20000616165753.01df8c40@popmail.mcs.net> Message-ID: <Pine.OSF.4.21.0006181312580.23772-100000@marple.umd.edu> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Thanks for the lucid summary, Aaron.
My sense is that the field is still very young, and that we are all still
in the throes of defining the basic elements of what we are dealing with.
Eventually some people will make the more compelling break-throughs,
whether they are theoretical or practical, and then the field will have
some things to orient itself around and develop further. I like a lot of
the thinking that some are posting here, even when it is incompatible or
tentative. A couple of topics have stimulated me to think in different
ways, and I hope that is the experience of most people on this list.
I don't think we should get too carried away with the infallibility of
scientific method. I have been 'in' science long enough, now, to have seen
some awful instances of myopia amid properly well-regarded scientists.
Scientists are people, too, and we have our hang-ups, our blind
acceptances of assumptions, and our vested interests. No point in glossing
this over. (Example that everyone may recognize: cold fusion. And in the
'self-help' category, the NAS's report some time ago on human
technology. (Can't remember the title.))
A question, embedded below.
- Lawrence
On Sun, 18 Jun 2000, Aaron Lynch wrote:
>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.
SNIP
>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
Are you talking about the Y2K computer code problem? Or about religious
millenial beliefs?
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