Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id WAA05200 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk); Sat, 6 Oct 2001 22:24:44 +0100 From: "salice" <salice@gmx.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2001 23:19:16 +0000 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: What/who selects memes? In-reply-to: <000b01c14ea4$7ae33c00$2aaabed4@default> Message-Id: <E15pytD-0003Sj-00@dryctnath.mmu.ac.uk> Sender: fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> I don 't want to nitpit, but according to experiments conducted by P.
> Haggard
> of University College London is it revealed that the motor cortex in our
> brain is getting active 2000 milliseconds before a decision was made.
> Do you, in such circumstances have a real choise !?
> Could the feeling of having made a decision just be a (memetic) illusion !?
Sometimes you can make a conscious choice about spreading a meme
sometimes it happens unconscious. But the selection happens in the
brain. That was my point.
> > Shortly after the WTC attack, there were pictures floating around
> > from pakistani people dancing in the streets. Some TV stations showed
> > these pictures some didn't. They decided to spread this meme or not
> > based on a thinking process in their brain.
> << IMO, that was not based primary on a thinking process.
> Primary such a choise, such a decision was based upon moralistic conside-
> rations and appropiate aesthetics.
Well moralistic considerations is a thinking process which differs
between people. "Appropiate aesthetics" also differs between tv
stations. And tv stations don't exist on their own. There are people
behind them who decide what to send and how to send it. They select
whch memes to spread.
> Although, these were based upon a former, than secundair thinking process,
> but where those people based their decision upon was basically experience.
> It is not that such attacks happened for the first time that people had no
> experience with extreme violence and attrocities of any kind.
It was the first time that people saw the WTC collapse.
> Those people based their decision upon former memetic lineages, cultural,
> social, easthetic, moralistic traits and habits if you like.
Whatever they based their decision on, they did it in their brain.
And different brains came to different decisions.
> But those attacks were in that manner different from all the rest that even
> the Palestian authorities condempted the outbursts of joy.
> The showing of sympathy could be faked or not, I do not know, but the
The palestian authorities would sure have liked to keep this meme
away from spreading but they didn't have enough control over it.
They would have liked to select against this meme but other people
selected for it.
> And on the other hand, they knew instinctivily that those attacks were bad
> publicity for the Palestian cause... that too was not a result of a primary
> thinking process, but was due to past experience.
It doesn't really matter what kind of thinking process they invoked,
the thing is that their brain comes to the conclusion to select a
meme or not. To let it become succesful or not.
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