RE: Knowledge, Memes and Sensory Perception

From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@cogeco.ca)
Date: Sun Jan 20 2002 - 20:21:28 GMT

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    Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 15:21:28 -0500
    To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    From: Keith Henson <hkhenson@cogeco.ca>
    Subject: RE: Knowledge, Memes and Sensory Perception
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    At 08:22 AM 20/01/02 -0800, you wrote:
    >> >Keith Henson
    >> >
    >>The Church of Virus is indeed attempting to memetically engineer a
    >>religion that paradoxically values logic, rationality, the scientific
    >>method and provisional evidence-grounded knowledge over blind faith and
    >>dogmatic belief. Their 'patron saint' is Charles Darwin.
    >> >
    >Keith,

    You misread the attributions levels, "Joe Dees" <joedees@addall.com> wrote
    that.

    >I thought for a moment you were going to say the patron sait's name was L.
    >Ron Hubbard. ;-)>
    >
    >How about as a guiding theme: The means you use shape the ends you get.
    >
    >If, for example, you believe in "a life for a life, an eye for an eye, and
    >a tooth for a tooth," what you get is a country full of graves and the
    >living are mostly eyeless and toothless. If you believe that the only
    >logical transaction between two parties is one that produces a win-win
    >result for both, you will have a society based on nonzero game playing.
    >
    >Of the four possible outcomes of a transaction: I win, you win; I win, you
    >lose; I lose, you win, and I lose, you lose, only the first is logically
    >worth pursuing. Most of the bad things people do to each other are based
    >on the other three.

    I don't yet know enough about humans, particularly the psychology that
    arises from our evolutionary past, to design a religion. Some hints about
    what might be involved can be found in *Origin of Virtue" by Matt
    Riddley. I suspect rationality might play a minor role though.

    Keith Henson

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