Re: The Demise of a Meme

From: Robin Faichney (robin@reborntechnology.co.uk)
Date: Thu Mar 29 2001 - 12:59:05 BST

  • Next message: Chris Taylor: "Re: Memetic Paradigms"

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    Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 12:59:05 +0100
    To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    Subject: Re: The Demise of a Meme
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    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>
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    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)
    

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