The Status of Memetics as a Science

From: Lawrence DeBivort (debivort@umd5.umd.edu)
Date: Thu Apr 19 2001 - 14:25:46 BST

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From: "Lawrence DeBivort" <debivort@umd5.umd.edu>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: The Status of Memetics as a Science
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 09:25:46 -0400
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    I find little difficulty in distinguishing religion from memetics. Memetics
    models and tracks the spread of ideas and beliefs. Religion is composed of
    beliefs (whether they are 'correct' or not). At a mimimum, then, memetics is
    meta to religion.

    The only danger I can see to memetics (other than that it might be poorly
    done and waste time) is that it might give rise to an engineering
    application that might be misused ethically or socially.

    - Lawrence

    <Religion is typically about following after entities which possibly
    don't
    > even exist. Memetics could be in the same ballpark, but I wonder if this
    > means memetics too is dangerous and insiduous.>
    >
    Vincent: Indeed, indeed. This is I think what some ignore, others embrace,
    and some of us worry about constantly.

    Vincent

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