From: "Aaron Agassi" <agassi@erols.com>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: malicious gossip
Date: Tue, 6 Jul 1999 20:35:07 -0400
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.95q.990706200718.12369A-100000@frost.umd.edu>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk]On Behalf
> Of Lawrence H. de Bivort
> Sent: Tuesday, July 06, 1999 8:19 PM
> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Subject: RE: Astrology
>
>
> On Tue, 6 Jul 1999, Aaron Agassi wrote:
>
> >> From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk]On Behalf
> >> Of Thomas McMahan
> >>
> >> No, I still don't buy the contagion analogy, at least not quite that
> >> literally. When you try to take that analogy lock, stock, and barrel
> >> from a biological premise and place it into a cultural one it ends up
> >> sounding silly; memes "hiding" and so forth like they're conscious
> >> entities or, like viruses, have evolved specific techniques to ward off
> >> specific invaders.
> >Do you deny that infection tends towards the most suitable vectors first?
>
> In our view, memes are essentially linguistic, communicative constructs
> that have self-disseminating and self-protective architectures. Memes will
> spread best via people or other communicative channels that adopt them and
> repeat them, especially if the meme has been able to destroy any
> countervailing beliefs/linguistic constructs. Thus a meme that is
> 'targeted' must have properties that enable it to proceed along the right
> channels to reach its target.
I submit that this applies to malicious gossip. It is fascinating to some,
repulsive to others. Further more, the meme also endows the host with some
sense of who will respond with the strongest reinforcement, and who not.
Thus the meme encodes the host for the most efficient vectorization of
memetic transmission.
>
> A meme, in its linguistic physical form can lie dormant if it fails to be
> disseminated. For example, it can be embedded in a book, or a letter, or
> an email, ready to be 'activated' when conditions are ready for it. It can
> also lie latent in someone's brain, a phrase, say, that all of a sudden,
> perhaps years after it was heard, that now 'makes sense' to the person who
> has been carrying it (remembering it) but had not yet integrated it into
> the rest of their thinking or believing.
>
> >Do you deny that a personality can be defined by which sorts of
> memes will
> >find the consciousness permeable? And, indeed, does this not
> carry with it
> >evolutionary factors with ramifications to success and survival?
>
> It would have to be a pretty powerful meme to be considered defining (or
> more appropriately re-defining of a personality). It does happen --
> religious conversions might be an example -- but most memes operate below
> that level, I would think, and introduce changes into a person or a
> culture's thinking that modifies existing belief structures, rather than
> redefining them from scratch.
I did not speak of such a powerful meme. I spoke of the preexisting
personality. Would you agree that any person can be a better host or vector
for some memes than others?
>
> Lawrence de Bivort
> The Memetics Group
>
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> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
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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