From: "Aaron Agassi" <agassi@erols.com>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: Not a comprehensive theory
Date: Mon, 2 Aug 1999 14:17:43 -0400
In-Reply-To: <000301bedcff$5ed8f2c0$f65aac3e@paul>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk]On Behalf
> Of Paul Marsden
> Sent: Monday, August 02, 1999 11:55 AM
> To: memetics
> Subject: RE: Not a comprehensive theory
>
>
>
> >Does it then become a meme, at first transmission? Then what was
> it before?
> >Perhaps a meme should be defined by transmissibility, not prior
> >transmission.
>
> Well you could do that but it broadens the realm of memetics out of all
> things cultural into the domain of, well, all intrapsychic phenomena, and
> critically you lose the social (natural) selective mechanism that I would
> argue is the element of memetics that has the most significant and novel
> explanatory power within a theoretically informed empirical
> memetic research
> paradigm (i.e. it can explain non-rational behaviour) - see my papers in
> JASSS, JoM and SRonline.
If Memetics is taken to deal strictly with cultural transmission, then pure
Memetics is not broadened into all of Memegeny and Interactive
Phenomenology. Never the less, culture remains only part of reality,
inclusive of the full range of events that constitute selection phenomena,
and never culture alone. No system really ever functions in isolation. Such
isolation is purely hypothetical. No culture is ever truly isolated from
reality, no matter how Solipsistic a degenerate culture becomes. Let us
never mistake metaphor for Ontology. This raises a MettaMemetic question of
the place of culture in the larger system of physical reality. I submit that
this question belongs to Epistemological Methodology on a cultural scale.
Benevolence and Critical Rationalism spread good ideas, but evil and
Sophistry spread faulty ideas. Trivial and Karmically neutral memes, like
unto genes in the body who's expression is pragmatically moot, are ideas
accepted without examination, because, after all, they may not prompt much
examination. That makes them uncomplicated illustrations for Memetic
principle, as if Memetics where divorced from any larger system the domain
of Logical Cognition, Ethics and Ontology. Critical Rationalism is the
immune filter for the good, that is deactivated or suppressed by evil.
The Memetics of good and evil brings me back to my previous question of
malicious gossip, including out and out character assassination. Its vectors
of transmission are uncritical and bad people. Again, to paraphrase Sun Tzu,
evil gossip flows like water, around all obstacles, into the low places,
avoiding the higher moral ground. Or like electricity, flowing through the
best available conductor, not anyone insulated by sympathy, morality, or
critical thinking.
It also explains my own personal experience, when I was defamed ostracized
from the ARISIA Science Fiction convention after conviction in abscentum in
their kangaroo court process, every asshole approving this evil action
against me knew all about it as a matter of common knowledge within the
community, while anyone decent and reasonable remained in the dark,
surprised and shocked to hear of the matter when I told them. Some may even
have been deceived into assuming that someone else entirely had been banned.
In other words, evil is secretive and conspiratorial. And this is a
Darwinian advantage, despite actually obstructing social evolution and
rejecting Ontology. Thus my applied Memetics challenge was as to the
manufacture and dissemination of disrupter behavioral memes, or Clique
Busters TM.
>
> Paul Marsden
> Graduate Research Centre in the Social Sciences
> University of Sussex
>
> P.Marsden@sussex.ac.uk
> Paul.Marsden@newscientist.net
> http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/hbpe2/darwinia.htm
> ICQ 35642304
> Tel (44) (0) 958 733 414
>
>
>
> ===============================================================
> 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
>
===============================================================
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