Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id NAA01409 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 29 Mar 2001 13:08:18 +0100 Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 12:59:05 +0100 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: The Demise of a Meme Message-ID: <20010329125905.A1365@reborntechnology.co.uk> References: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745D2B@inchna.stir.ac.uk> <20010329110130.B535@reborntechnology.co.uk> <3AC31511.ED22A7C2@bioinf.man.ac.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.15i In-Reply-To: <3AC31511.ED22A7C2@bioinf.man.ac.uk>; from Christopher.Taylor@man.ac.uk on Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 11:57:21AM +0100 From: Robin Faichney <robin@reborntechnology.co.uk> Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 11:57:21AM +0100, Chris Taylor wrote:
> > If you want to know why people are susceptible to irrational beliefs, on
> > the other hand, the answer lies in psychology, not memetics.
>
> Uh-uh. Can't agree. You need the total memetic perspective. There is no
> 'you', there is just another island of memes in the global archipeligo.
That is just one perspective. (Joe will say it's not even that, but
let's not let him dominate here.)
> These islands sometimes prove viable habitats for 'irrational beliefs'
> (i.e. not validated by testing) because the nature of the other
> inhabitants cause them to be so.
That's fine, at that level of generalisation. The problem is when
you try to get down to specifics. That is simply impossible using the
super-sparse conceptual toolbag of memetics. You end up talking about
what is going in someone's mind, and despite your old-fashioned and
ignorant prejudice against it, probably uncritically copied from older
but not wiser biologists, nothing better than psychology has yet arisen
for explaining what's going on in an individual mind. The suggestion
that memetics has the potential to do that is no better than any other
speculative fiction.
-- Robin Faichney Get your Meta-Information from http://www.ii01.org (CAUTION: contains philosophy, may cause heads to spin)=============================================================== 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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