From: Chris Taylor (christ@ebi.ac.uk)
Date: Thu 21 Jul 2005 - 14:53:26 GMT
Hiya.
Sorry -- EP still won't wash, and I've been partially party to
most of the recapitulations of the arguments supporting it.
A mind is an environment to be exploited. 'Bad' things can grow,
but only 'bad' as judged through our almost-impossible-to-shed
moral goggles. What replicates survives, and ideas like that
survive for all sorts of perfectly valid _amoral_ evolutionary
reasons that don't require higher order functionality, or any
grand plan to increase survival. Memes are often kind to us,
just as diseases mostly don't kill (even the nasty ones evolve
to become lass nasty over time as they spread better). But some
do really horrid things, just like the disease that makes snails
climb to the top of a plant and waggle around waiting to be
predated to complete the life cycle of the parasite within (and
actually the snails are so bonkers that it puts the birds off to
soem extent -- its usually the young that fall prey [calling
captain IRONY]).
Grow up non-white in Leeds (or one of many oter places), feel
put upon, have internal memes (or whatever) that exclude lots,
but favour others. There's nothing 'bad' about the weeds that
grow where there is not climax forest; they are just as valid.
There is nothing 'wrong' with wanting to kill maim and destroy;
this is not a malfunction, it is just another set of behaviours.
I abhor this murderous idiocy (before anyone jumps down my
throat) but it is not tricky to explain. At least that's how it
feels to me.
Cheers, Patchy Chris.
Kate Distin wrote:
> Keith Henson wrote:
>
>> At 10:10 AM 20/07/05 +0100, Kate wrote:
>>
>> snip
>>
>>> This must tie into the suicide bombers' mentality somewhere along the
>>> line. If memetics is true then it must be able to account for what's
>>> going on there, which is surely memetic to some extent. Any
>>> insights, anyone?
>>
>>
>>
>> "Keith Henson has coined the name `memeoids' for `victims that have
>> been taken over by a meme to the extent that their own survival
>> becomes inconsequential ... You see lots of these people on the
>> evening news from such places as Belfast or Beirut'. "
>>
>> End notes Second Ed. Selfish Gene.
>>
>> "Memeoid" is descriptive, but memetics is small a frame to get to the
>> root of *why* people are susceptible to lethal memes, particularly
>> ones that lead to behavior such as becoming a suicide bomber.
>>
>> Understanding *why* takes evolutionary psychology to explain or at
>> least try to explain where humans got these really strange
>> psychological traits.
>>
>> I have been ranting about EP, conditional behavioral switches and why
>> humans are susceptible to certain classes of memes at some times and
>> not others for years on this list.
>>
>> It's not a comfortable subject.
>>
>> Keith Henson
>>
>>
>>
>
> What a succinctly clear distinction - that's what I like about this
> list: you ask for insights, and you get them!
>
> Kate
>
> ===============================================================
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>
>
-- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ chris.taylor@ebi.ac.uk http://psidev.sf.net/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ =============================================================== 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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