On Thu, April 11, 2013 12:55, Ali H wrote:
> ...
> In terms of the current discussion, it seems that an obvious prerequisite
> is that (a) the agent must come in contact with the meme, and (b) have
> some
> mechanism for interpreting and assessing it. I would imagine the cultural
> and social norms would factor in their assessment.
>
> ...
> John Gray in this article (
http://www.vice.com/read/john-gray-interview-atheism?utm_source=vicetwitterus)
> ... reject that there exists some inevitable
> cumulative progress of memes. Rather, they would argue that memes are
> propagated and selected not by some generic fitness factor, but by
> sustained, concerted efforts by individuals and groups, and gains in memes
> are more ephemeral than we may suspect, and even their institutionalize
> does not guarantee that they will persist (see for example the current
> erosion of norms against torture, norms for habeus corpus, norms for
> innocent until proven guilty or the right to due process).
>
> This further reminds me of the work done by the Koch brothers in creating
> a massive meme generating machine ...
>
> A brief summary - they've created and funded a broad network
> of people and organizations, where a meme can be seeded, repeated ...
> Efforts like theirs were significant factors contributing to how ...
> 24% of Americans seriously think that Obama is possibly the
>
>anti-Christ<http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2011/PPP_Release_National_ConspiracyTheories_040213.pdf> (01)
These two ideas (memes promoting goodness & antiChrist) both reminded
me of one of the most successful and long-lasting memes, the god meme. (02)
This meme seems to have several basic purposes -- to promote goodness,
to comfort people, to explain things that people can't understand, and to
empower those in charge of explaining the details of the meme. (03)
The first purpose is certainly beneficial. The second is beneficial to the
extent that it doesn't hinder people from taking action to improve their
situation (or that of others). The third can be helpful if it prevents
people from eating shellfish that spoils in the heat or undercooked pork
which may cause disease, but is harmful to the extent that it hinders
scientific exploration to determine rational explanations and makes it
harder for new scientific explanations to be accepted. The fourth
purpose has brought about much suffering in the world. (04)
-- doug (05)
> Ignoring the effects and the means of propagation for memes seems pretty
> irresponsible to me :P. (06)
> Best,
> Ali
>
> On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 11:17 AM, Ronald Stamper
> <stamper.measur@xxxxxxxxx>wrote:
>
>>
>> Dear colleagues,
>>
>> Memes operate through specialised clusters of social norms. A well
>> exercised perceptual norm draws the meme to our attention; then a
>> cluster
>> of semiological norms that encode its rich set of connotations, then
>> triggers other powerful norms provoking attitudes of many kinds:
>> emotions,
>> behavioural dispositions, expectations, other perceptions . . .
>>
>> We cannot disconnect information from social norms without treating it
>> as
>> more or less a physical phenomenon, as computer science does. Norms
>> determine what information people need to function socially, especially
>> collaboratively.
>>
>> I hope that discussing memes will draw attention to the essential role
>> of
>> norms in the functioning of every human information system, which
>> distinguishes them from IT systems. Disregarding norms allows us to
>> treat semantics in the artificial, mechanistic, OWL-oriented paradigm
>> that
>> seems to dominate most Ontolog discussions. Real-world semantics, is
>> impossible without understanding the continual interplay between norms
>> and
>> signs (information).****
>>
>> Ronald Stamper
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> .
> (•`'·.¸(`'·.¸(•)¸.·'´)¸.·'´•) .,.,
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