From: "Aaron Agassi" <agassi@erols.com>
To: <Critical-Cafe@mjmail.eeng.dcu.ie>, <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: Methodological Memetics and the transmission of conjecture
Date: Mon, 5 Jul 1999 22:31:07 -0400
A meme is an element or complex of elements of ideas. A meme is like unto a
gene, in that it is an influential component of the host consciousness. The
host might even be considered the sum of his or her memes.
A meme is said to reproduce like a virus, being communicated to the next
host consciousness. This post will be an examination of some problems of
communication. The parallels in how we think, and how we communicate.
Just as organisms are to different degrees compatible or incompatible to
infect one another, with different microbes, or not; so too do any two
consciousness' find degrees of permeability and impermeability in Memetic
communication. Either Chris Lofting is impermiably thick, or I am!
Cross linking memes which I carry that might endow other memes with higher
transmissibility have failed to infect Chris Lofting. Specifically, these
are Hypothetico Deductive memes, that have shaped the Epistemological
Evolution of the consciousness' as part of which they now abide. Of course,
Hypothetico Deductive memes function to process input from the outside
world. But less obviously, they have also taken over Memetic transmission
functions. This obsoletetizes other permeation memes. For example, Inductive
ones. As Hypothetico Deductive reality testing takes over from more
primitive antecedents, it also upgrades communication functions. The result
is more and more hosts with an irritable Memetic alergy, as a result of now
receding Inductive Communication permeability. Nobody has any patience, any
more, to be shown a collection of supposed evidence by someone who cannot or
will not begin by stating their hypothesis, then explaining the evidence,
and then delineating it's refutability.
Perhaps the memetic host memretically represented by the marker phonetic
meme 'Chris Lofting', is infected with some self concieling permutation of
defective Verificationist meme. This mene demands solid foundation for
beliefs. It also misinforms the host as to the nature of any such solidity.
Thus he would be alergic to the congecturality of begining with a clear
unproven hypothesis, first, only subsequently to be followed by whatever
evidence. He would also be unwilling to frame a refutation. But most
importantly, a conciousness suffering memetic Inductivist infection will be
programmed to attempt memetic communication by the transmission of data
components, often in a bombardment, or repetition, intended to reassemble
themselves within the next host, in order to copy the original. The implicit
assumption is that memes really are like viral matter, in that enough of the
infections agent must reach the new host, in order for the invader to take
hold in the new environs. But this mode of transmission fails. The response
is then to redouble the repetition bombardment. But this only resensitizes
the allergic reaction, all the more. Thus, Inductivism becomes an
evolutionary dead end for all other thought, a hunter killer meme, attaching
it self to all other memes, disabling their transmission. It also tends to
immunize the host against Hyothetico Deductive repair memes, that actually
would help to facilitate the cooperation and receptivity of any future
memetic hosts.
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