RE: Is Suicide Contagious? A Case Study in Applied Memetics

From: Vincent Campbell (v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk)
Date: Thu Apr 19 2001 - 14:13:42 BST

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    From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk>
    To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
    Subject: RE: Is Suicide Contagious? A Case Study in Applied Memetics
    Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 14:13:42 +0100
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    Ah yes, of course, but that's not the same as is being implied in contagion
    theory (again, not that this is what Paul is necessarily saying). My beef
    is in relation to the mediation part of the issue- that mediated suicide
    (e.g. press reports, or TV dramatisations) lead to suicides in previously
    non-suicidal people. Again, I think this has relatively little to do with
    what Paul specifically is arguing, I'm just trying to keep people from
    making erroneous jumps of causation.

    Vincent

    > ----------
    > From: J. R. Molloy
    > Reply To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    > Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2001 11:41 pm
    > To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    > Subject: Re: Is Suicide Contagious? A Case Study in Applied Memetics
    >
    > From: "Vincent Campbell" <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk>
    > > Think
    > > about it anecdotally- when was the last time you witnessed a suicide (or
    > > murder) on TV and felt compelled to attempt it yourself?
    >
    > I know several people who have told me that hearing about someone's
    > suicide
    > made them feel depressed. And I've felt very slightly suicidal myself upon
    > hearing of the suicide of someone that I liked. (Sasha Chislenko
    > <http://www.lucifer.com/~sasha/home.html> as just one example.)
    >
    > --J. R.
    >
    > Useless hypotheses:
    > consciousness, phlogiston, philosophy, vitalism, mind, free will, qualia,
    > analog computing, cultural relativism
    >
    > Everything that can happen has already happened, not just once,
    > but an infinite number of times, and will continue to do so forever.
    > (Everything that can happen = more than anyone can imagine.)
    >
    > http://www.shasta.com/jr
    > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/virtropy
    >
    >
    > ===============================================================
    > 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
    >

    ===============================================================
    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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