From: Hans-Cees Speel <hanss@zondisk.sepa.tudelft.nl>
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 1997 21:43:02 +0000
Subject: Re: Blue Star (was Re: A Drosophila for cultural evolution)
> It seems to me that this is a little tricky. Presumably the people who
> spread the meme don't know it's false. So just why do they spread it?
Because people have this incredible urge to shout at what they think
is wrong. In fact they were thaught that any drugs are wrong from
their childhood, probably strengthened by a protestant or other
moral that tels us that work is good, and pleasure is always
suspicious.
The judgement of drugs are bad is held up by media, social contacts
and so on, and the occasional scientist.
That the definition of drugs is not consistent, and the facts are not
consistent is never an issue with beliefs.The forces with the drug
war are mostly behavioral, and little rational. Becuase we see people
dying on drug A (crack), we judge people that want to smoke mariuana
by law, and imprison them (even if it cures them medically).
(remember I am from the Netherlands, so my opinions mide differ from
USA people somewhat:-)).
But seriously, classification under one concept DRUGS, makes a lot of
a difference to the way people feel. Often they feel so strongly
rationality cannot change this.
> Why do they find it credible?
See above; becuase everybody says so.
Beyond this, there are probably people who
> pretty much believe it, but don't spread it. Why not? Are they lazy,
> not communty-minded?
well, maybe? They are not interested, judge they won't have impact,
will be laughed at etcetera.
>
> And what about people who receive the meme, know it to be false, and
> don't try to correct the information?
Same things
hc
Theories come and go, the frog stays [F. Jacob]
-------------------------------------------------------
Hans-Cees Speel
Managing Editor "Journal of Memetics Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission"
http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
submit papers to JOM-EMIT@sepa.tudelft.nl
I work at:
|School of Systems Engineering, Policy Analysis and management
|Technical University Delft, Jaffalaan 5 2600 GA Delft PO Box 5015 The Netherlands
E-mail hanss@sepa.tudelft.nl
http://www.sepa.tudelft.nl/webstaf/hanss/hanss.htm
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