Subject: RE: Memetic engineering challenge
Date: Wed, 7 Jul 1999 16:12:49 -0400
From: "Wade T.Smith" <wade_smith@harvard.edu>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
>Bad people are memetic engineers
Quite often the only effective ones, too. Bad things have been and
continue to be territorially advantageous to perform. 'Feel good'
policies have little consequence, whereas 'kill the other' policies are
rather, um, effective.
But memes are not just behavior modification devices- (we can go on and
on wondering what they in fact are, of course)- but certainly the memetic
model can be used to support and construct behavior modifying agendas and
programs, which is what, it appears, ESI is in business to do.
Whether or not this is memetics is debatable.
Whether or not this is what any of us want memetics to be is debatable.
But supposing that there could be some way to force memetics to offer its
secrets only to a cognoscenti of do-good illuminati is, well, delirious
thinking at best.
- Wade
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