Date: Sat, 01 May 1999 09:48:24 +0200
From: Mario Vaneechoutte <Mario.Vaneechoutte@rug.ac.be>
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Dichotomisations (e.g. vertical/horizontal, Astrology et al)
Chris Lofting wrote:
> Aaron's website has the following entry:
>
> "Brief Example: Consider the belief that you need to find a romantic partner
> of a "compatible" astrological sign. This notion causes singles who have it
> to raise the subject of astrological sign compatibility with each new
> potential partner, in order to determine compatibility. So the idea exploits
> human mating drives to get itself retransmitted. It is a "sexually
> transmitted belief," implicitly telling some hosts to send, in effect, 4 or
> 12 copies of this idea to potential partners before accepting anyone for
> further dating. That includes people who are manipulated to retransmit even
> if spreading the word is not their specific motive for doing so. Resembling
> a paperless chain letter in some ways, the thought contagion also behaves in
> humans much as a computer virus behaves in computers. Though it does not
> erase its hosts’ memory, it can make it harder to find a partner deemed
> "compatible" by arbitrarily narrowing the field. So like a sexually
> transmitted microorganism, astrology ideas parasitize human mating for their
> own reproduction. This is not all that the new theory has to say about
> astrology, and astrology is not a special case. Similar analyses shed fresh
> light on a vast range of ancient religions and recent ideologies."
Last week there were over 100 females wanting to mate with me (quite incredible,
isn't it?). They all asked my astrological sign. Unfortunately only 12
matched.Still a lot of mating last week even to my standards, but no meme
transmission, since I don't believe in the importance of astrological signs in
general and for mating and thus I would never ask for it (given that my wife
would allow me to address other females to ...). Also all the interesting
females which consider astrology (for mating) as nonsense as well would give up
potential interest because of my question (given that my wife ...).
Do you understand the flaws in the reasoning I am trying to point to?
Mario
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