Re: The Status of Memetics as a Science

From: Aaron Agassi (agassi@erols.com)
Date: Thu Apr 19 2001 - 17:06:43 BST

  • Next message: Wade T.Smith: "Re: The Status of Memetics as a Science"

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    From: "Aaron Agassi" <agassi@erols.com>
    To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
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    Subject: Re: The Status of Memetics as a Science
    Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 12:06:43 -0400
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    ----- Original Message -----
    From: "Lawrence DeBivort" <debivort@umd5.umd.edu>
    To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
    Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2001 9:25 AM
    Subject: The Status of Memetics as a Science

    > 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.
    >
    We used to call it 'Propaganda'.

    > - 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
    >

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