From: Chris Taylor (chris.taylor@ebi.ac.uk)
Date: Mon 23 Jan 2006 - 12:56:01 GMT
Part the second:
>> As for the 'loss' of the process; as they say one is never too old to
>> learn (barring neurodegeneration, but even Alzheimer's patients have
>> demonstrated some learning ability)
>
> When you observe the degeneration of Alzheimer's patients it does make
> you realise just how much of what we do on a daily basis is learned. How
> many of the things that we don't even think about, they're so basic to
> our daily living, are actually cultural. It reminds you that how and
> when we wash, dress, eat, use the toilet, interact socially, etc. are
> all learned as babies/toddlers. Memetic, not genetic. On a separate
> subject, I think this reinforces my claim that religious memes are far
> from unique in their stickiness.
I think the patterns of loss are interesting also (similar to
spongiform encephalopathies etc.); there is a model that
predicts that in wildlife refugia, keeping 10% of the area
maintains 50% of the diversity (i.e. the rate of species loss
rapidly accelerates while the area avaliable to support it
diminishes linearly). There is also the 'one tiger to a
mountain' casting of the same idea that states that half a
mountain is no good as half a tiger (which is what it could in
principle support) isn't a valid proposition...
>> 1) Empathy: Seeing as models of others will be made of the same
>> meme-stuff as your'self' then effects manifesting in the model can
>> 'bleed' across from the model -- you can _quite literally_ feel others
>> pain once you have internalised them, so being nice is not altruism,
>> it is selfishness, cos their pain _is_ your pain as their joy _is_
>> your joy. I'd argue that a core part of the meme-machine is a
>> biological link that ties forebrain-based mind stuff to emotional
>> midbrain centres and that that mechanism is at work here (this link
>> must exist -- I've been so 'gutted' by events at times in my life it
>> has made me nauseous for example -- but god knows what the physical
>> mechanism is -- some sort of pattern resonance -- I can't be pulled up
>> on this though as we don't even know why pain hurts!!!):
>> Self-meme-mind patterns can clearly fire the emotional centres (pain,
>> pleasure etc.), so given that the models are so similar to the 'main
>> event' (i.e you) I'd argue that _they_ can actually trigger those same
>> centres through the exact same effect. That's the nub of it. And as I
>> say when people 'assume' others are like them what is happening is
>> that the models really are (as I mentioned above) just recycled bits
>> of you plus whatever you may have observed and captured from others,
>> so in the naive it is obvious why the 'assumption' of 'like me' occurs
>> and why it is so unpleasant when the model turns out to be misleading
>> as a result. We do not like our models to fail (that's axiomatic -- as
>> fundamental as physical pain -- an a priori part of the meme machine
>> along with a handful of other things).
>
> Hmmm. I'm not quite convinced by this model of empathy. Perhaps that's
> because I'm not at all convinced by the Dennettian memeplex model of the
> mind. But it's more than this. You're no doubt familiar with Simon
> Baron-Cohen's views on autism/empathy: that there is a spectrum from
> empathising to synthesising, with most female minds being stronger on
> empathising and most male minds stronger on synthesising (he does not
> claim that *all* men/women are like this - indeed he speculates that in
> many ways his own mind is more 'female' in these terms). Hence his
> theory that autism is an extreme version of the male mind: very strong
> on synthesising (finding patterns; understanding and building systems)
> and very weak on empathising. I find his view very persuasive (see for
> example "The Essential Difference, Penguin, 2004) and it implies that
> our (lack of) ability to empathise is largely innate. Genetic rather
> than memetic.
It's a leap I'll admit, but it makes a lot of sense (for example
it provides imho by far the most compact and satisfying
explanation of the transition from abused to abuser as per that
previous monster post of mine); I haven't actually heard any
other convincing explanation of this (especially the age
triggers), and it is just one example of how the memes-only
(plus the kind of stuff I've discussed above about the 'mental
environment' and emotional ties to memes) model works well. Good
models always explain a lot for very little effort, and do
usually feel self-consistent (even if not appealing). Of course
it is no proof or disproof (as the orchestra swells for the
reprise).
On the (stereotypical) maleness thing; I think it will take some
pretty blinding statistics to ever separate what is learnt from
what is a result of some predisposition in the machinery, but I
have seen some evidence that where males profess to 'feel more
female' there are some minor brain structures that appear to be
intermediate between make and female states (I forget the detail
-- it was a [BBC] Horizon or something). The
linear-circular/Mars-Venus/action-chat/kill-hug thing is there
to an extent; again invoking a biological (keith-esque but as I
say at the much lower level) argument feels right here. I don't
buy the 'super-male' view of autists though as this is too
simplistic imho; that there are some aspects of some Asperger's
individuals that correlate with some of what is taken to signify
maleness is misleading. While males (oversimplifying for the
sake of argument) may think more linearly about the future and
less about others, and females more about tangential
consequences and feelings, this is likely the result of some
minor deliberate tweaking of network properties that has an
analogous counterpart in Asperger's but is not the same.
Basically it isn't exaggerated maleness although it shares some
features with 'maleness'. Hair split? Anyway there is a
difference between a car having a speed limiter fitted and
having a faulty throttle -- how male is that example :)
> Perhaps this doesn't necessarily contradict what you've said about
> empathy, come to think of it. I guess I'm just not sure that what goes
> on when we feel someone else's pain is that we've built an internal
> model of their *memes*. Some quite small chilren (not most, but some)
> can display remarkable degrees of empathy, before they've accumulated
> many memes of their own, never mind other people's. And we can feel
> empathy with people who, in the normal run of things, we'd say we have
> hardly any memes in common with. And conversely we can share many memes
> with someone yet not feel much empathy with them.
Okay we have a problem here -- cf. the alzheimers point above
where _everything_ practically is learned. My youngest (a girl)
is emotionally very savvy now (a stage the older boy went
through also); both could read others aged one and less, and
knew how to get people to laugh. I just think that an awful lot
of learning (~memes -- a much broader definition than the
backards baseball caps) is going on really early. But to some
extent what goes in is not displayed on the surface; language
appears in fits and starts but goes in as a fairly regular
stream which to me says that memes are being stored up all the
time from dot, but that what we see of them is not proportional
to rate of input. I think that even in very young kids memes can
be learned; the joy of copying and being copied starts in my
experience at six months or less...
Anyway; I think the manner in which we see pain and somehow then
feel pain is so direct that it has to bypass the conscious
level. Therefore whether one buys into the
'all-there-is-is-~memes' thing or not, the association between
our own sense of pain and the experiences associated with it
must be lighting up in resonance with the internalised version
of the meme correlating to seeing/imagining that experience in
someone else (especially for the imagining one where the
strongly-felt empathy on the assumption of pain in the other may
not even hold true under examination). Again this is quite
simple so I like it as an explanation...
> I'm feeling like I haven't quite got to grips with your analysis of
> empathy. Perhaps, as I say, it's because I'm not convinced by the
> mind-as-memes-alone model that it seems to be based on.
Yeah the whole thing is contingent to an extent on buying into
that model. Some of the effects could apply in a model
intermediate between this and the mind virus model that leaves
the internal stuff to the psychologists. But it's just that the
more I confront this model with the facts, the stronger it seems
to get -- belief huh ;D
Where there might be some proof to be had is through the route
of practical memetics (i.e. in the clinic); mostly it ends up
being someting akin to cognitive (behavioural) therapy (which
iirc is the only flavour that really has a track record of
helping funnily enough).
Cheers, Chris.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
chris.taylor@ebi.ac.uk
http://psidev.sf.net/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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