From: "Richard Brodie" <richard@brodietech.com>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: Critical thinking in memetics
Date: Tue, 26 May 1998 21:45:54 -0700
In-Reply-To: <356B7AF8.CB3EC7DC@echonyc.com>
"If you can't say something in an irritating way you might as well not have
said it at all." -- George Bernard Shaw
Richard Brodie richard@brodietech.com http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie
Author, "Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme"
http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/votm.htm
Visit Meme Central! http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/meme.htm
-----Original Message-----
From: b.edmonds@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:b.edmonds@mmu.ac.uk]On Behalf Of
Karthik Swaminathan
Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 1998 7:31 PM
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Critical thinking in memetics
Mario Vaneechoutte wrote:
> Well, if you ask me this goes in the right direction. First, because of
the
> -mostly overlooked - basic importance of emotions in memetic transmission,
> second, because it puts the actor where it should be: the human mind.
After
> all, it is there that selection between different memes occurs. I think
that
> one gets better answers when asking: "Why are certain memes preferentially
> adopted and spread - replicated by human minds" then when one asks: 'Why
do
> some memes replicate more successfully than others?" The emotional,
> psychological confort brought by memes is a large part of the answer. The
> pushing of buttons as suggested by Brodie is not such a bad approach at
all. I
> defended this approach previously:
> http://www.sepa.tudelft.nl/webstaf/hanss/nature.htm
>
There is no question that emotions play a big part in memetic selection. I
always
felt that this is quite obviouse. I agree that alertion of danger, sex and
food
are big drives in human emotion. My biggest problem with Brodies book is
that the
Trojan Horses that he himself sneaks in takes precedence over any talk of
Memetics which was my main purpose for buying the book. He could have
written
another book on the School system and the Constitution and stayed focused on
the
topic. I wished there was more on "pushing buttons" and less pushing
buttons.
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===============================================================
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