Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id WAA29592 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 19 Jun 2000 22:26:50 +0100 Message-ID: <01a901bfda3a$63069f80$8a21e7d8@proftim> From: "Tim Rhodes" <proftim@speakeasy.org> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: Re: Cons and Facades Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 15:03:09 -0700 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.2106.4 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.2106.4 Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Aaron,
Your posts always seem to leave me more perplexed than informed. Perhaps if
I understood your point-of-view a little better I could make some sense of
your obvious (but somewhat nebulous) concerns about the present growth of
the field.
Do you think, in the end, that memetics can stand up to rigorous testing
by the Scientific Method?
Do you think memetic principles (i.e.: the propagation of the ideas that
are best at propagating) threatens to undermine the functioning of the
Scientific Method in the long term?
Do you think the Scientific Method has failings built into it that might
cause it to overlook memetics despite its qualifications? (Assuming that it
can in fact pass muster, of course.) If so, what do you perceive them to
be? And haven't they always been there?
Do you have faith that memetics is correct -- is science -- and do you in
your heart believe that as such "the truth will out" in the end?
You see, Aaron, the reason I ask is that the impression I keep getting from
your posts (and this, again, is only my impression) is one of a person who
doubts his own faith and as a result projects heresy on all those around
him.
Here I must say, I doubt that your actual intentions match my perceptions in
this matter, so I think it's important to bring this impression to your
attention so that your can dispel and correct it promptly. For illustrative
purposes, I have replaced a few of the nouns in the following so that you
can better see how the structure of your writing can convey this impression
to the unsuspecting reader:
>Those who have invested their efforts in {the true god} honestly
>promoted have a natural self-interest in opposing the spread of
>devious {false gods} and devious attention deflections, while
>those who have invested their efforts more directly in {false gods}
>and devious {heresy} 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 {worshiping god} favors an elimination of the {heretical}
>atmosphere and its causes, for reasons relating to how seriously
>{the true god} is taken. The image {our one true god} has in the
>broader {} community also depends to a great degree on how
>effectively the {dogma} in our field winnows out the false. That,
>in turn, also depends upon how effectively cons and facades
>are rejected.
I hope that this illustration makes the implied tone and structure of the
argument you seem to be using a little more clear. I, myself, find it hard
to take seriously any arguments whose nature varies little from the same
ones made by television evangelists.
But in regard to the last two sentences above, which in the original read:
<<<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.>>>
This is a quite interesting place to start a discussion. Currently I
believe (I trust you'll correct me if I'm wrong) that "the Method" winnows
out ALL OF memetics, con or no, on the basis of a present inability to test
for results in an independent fashion. So if memetics is in peril, this is
the real front the battle must be fought on.
As I see it, if your true concern lies with the future of memetics, Aaron --
and again, I trust you'll correct me if I'm mistaken here about the actual
root of your concerns -- it seems to me that the most constructive approach
to take would be to devote ones energies into building actual experiments
that can be verified. I am interested, what are you currently working on to
that end?
-Tim Rhodes
p.s.: If you're at a loss for ideas, Aaron, here's one that encapsulates
all the ideas that seem to preoccupy so many of your thoughts these days:
1) Look at the sales curves for books written about memetics.
2) Attempt to isolate theoretically the memes you feel responsible for the
relative differences in these diffusion rates -- be they the use of "cons &
facades" or other effective memeplexes.
3) Test your theory by publishing (under a pseudonym of course, and only
for the purposes of experiment) a book which employs the strategies you feel
you have determined to be successful by your theory.
4) Analyze the sales curve of this new book to confirm or falsify your
assumptions.
5) Publish the findings.
-----Original Message-----
From: Aaron Lynch <aaron@mcs.net>
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Date: Sunday, June 18, 2000 7:32 AM
Subject: RE: Cons and Facades
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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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
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