The ridiculous conflict

Good point, Jenyar. Trading one parasitic meme for another does noone any good. But if atheism is a rejection of theistic beliefs, then wouldn't that carry to the meme, that atheism itself is a anti-meme? Perhaps that analogy is going too far.

Perhaps the distinction between the good and bad memes are the ones that are dangerous influence the host's behavior to protect the meme, and try to avoid host mutation of the meme. Self-preservation of the meme is the key. If scientific theories are looked upon as memes of their own right, then those hosts who allow their understanding of the theories to change based on testing and observation are not at the will of the meme, and so the meme is not a dangerous one. If one clings to a science theory, regardless of the counter evidence, then it does the same as the Christianity meme. An example would be many of the labeled crackpot theories that abound on the net. Despite evidence (or lack of) some people will still believe that their theory MUST be right. This is a meme that concentrates on self-preservation.

Back to atheism...since most atheists will say that if presented with positive proof in their mind that there is indeed a higher power, they would discard the label of atheist, the meme of "atheism" seems to be one that will allow change or even extinction for the benefit of the host. That doesn't seem like a bad meme to me.

I've just run across the meme concept, so maybe this isn't quite right. Comments?
 
Originally posted by Cris
wes,

Nah, order remains intact regardless of whether it is observed or not.

There are some nice proofs for this as well.
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what are the proofs?
thanks
 
spookz,

what are the proofs?
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I just knew someone would ask. I remember seeing them but I couldn't find them when I posted - aghh, I'll look again later.
 
Jen,

This theory hold the same attraction you contribute to religion. Only the ones who can see the truth knows the truth, and those what can't see it don't know it. Airtight....
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Yeah nice huh. Ok so I spout gibberish sometimes.

There is no reason why someone infected by a meme would not be aware of it – my initial misunderstanding assumed the opposite.

A joke for example is a meme. It infects others when it is being told. If it is a good joke then it is likely to be replicated many times, i.e. it would be considered virulent. If it is a bad joke then it might not get told at all and might easily die out.

However a joke meme in most cases would be considered benign, it is neither particular useful but then it really doesn’t do any harm either.

Still studying…….
 
"Genetic evolution ... can ... be Darwinian. Cultural (or memetic) change manifestly operates on the radically different substrate of Lamarckian inheritance, or the passage of acquired characters to subsequent generations. Whatever we invent in our lifetimes, we can pass on to our children by our writing and teaching. Evolutionists have long understood that Darwinism cannot operate effectively in systems of Lamarckian inheritance--for Lamarckian change has such a clear direction, and permits evolution to proceed so rapidly, that the much slower process of natural selection shrinks to insignificance before the Lamarckian juggernaut. (Gould 1997)"


" Given that the meme concept is nothing more than hip bio-babble, what is interesting about this theory is why anyone would want to believe in such an intellectually dubious proposition in the first place. (Barbrook 1996)"

memes

EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY

sociobiology



*fame? fortune? research grants? novel?
 
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"memetic evolution theory now provides a broadly unifying explanation of beliefs about family, sex, politics, health, abortion, and war." Formed from a heady mixture of Darwinian biology and Net hype, this theory supposedly represents a "paradigm shift" that supersedes all earlier explanations of human social development. This is complete cyberbollocks! Far from being something new, memetics is really another form of mystical positivism - a restatement of very old religious ideas in the latest scientific jargon.

For thousands of years, priests have been claiming that matter is controlled by spirit. The Bible opens with the famous line: "In the beginning was the Word." Plato's parable of the cave asserts that the material world is just a shadow cast by the divine. But in the modern world, most people would think that you were crazy if you still believed that human destiny was controlled by spirits. Yet, by using biobabble, Aaron can sound credible when he asserts that "ideas acquire people." As long as you rename them as memes, it is possible to believe in possession by demons and angels without sounding completely mad!

This is why it is very ironic that memetic theory seems to be so popular in the United States as a method of attacking Christian fundamentalism. For the proponents of meme theory are really not that different from their creationist opponents. When religion is denounced as a glorified computer virus, the meme theorists are themselves putting forward a mystical argument. Just like Christians, they're claiming that the Word can control the real. As an atheist, I have no wish to defend the idiocies of believers. However, it is important to challenge the condescending and ignorant assertion that Christianity can be simply explained away as a self-replicating idea. The power of religion has never been derived from its bizarre beliefs. Above all, religion is a set of social practices: a magical guide to regulate our profane affairs. We may deplore the sexual repression and group exclusivity encouraged by the faith, but we cannot deny that Christianity has provided a real structure for how humans should live down the centuries. As Ludwig Feuerbach pointed out, religion is a mystical way of expressing our real bonds with each other as members of a community beyond the individual.

It is no accident that meme theorists cannot construct a materialist analysis of religion. Your belief, Aaron, in demonic possession by memes is a way of denying the Promethean power of humanity. We may not be able to choose the historical circumstances in which we find ourselves, but we are a self-creating species. No meme can do it for us. We're the only ones responsible for our own destiny." (barbrook)

"The meme theory is the intellectual laziness of the quick fix. Its proponents are able to avoid doing the hard work of empirical research and serious theorizing. No need to spend hours in the archives or read difficult books by dead philosophers! Instead we can have the mystical meme: the "missing link," which can magically unlock the secrets of human history. During this debate, we've been repeatedly told that "different beliefs cause different ways of living." This simplistic undialectical analysis sweeps aside the messy complexity of human social development. For instance, returning to this debate's favorite example, American fundamentalism is derived from English Puritanism. Yet in England less than 10 percent of the population regularly go to church, while in the United States attendance is more than 40 percent. In Europe, even Islam is under threat as the second and third generations adopt modern habits and intermarry with nonbelievers. Such a wide disparity in social behavior cannot be dismissed as varying rates of memetic infection. Are we to believe that Americans are somehow more prone to being possessed by religious memes than their cousins across the ocean? This is an absurd argument! (barbrook)

lynch vs barbrook
 
Good link. But both sides have points, not just the ones you posted.

So while theists argue over whose interpretation is correct, atheists debate over why the theists bother arguing. :)
 
all are welcome

<a href="http://virus.lucifer.com/">
<img src="http://www.lucifer.com/virus/cov500.gif" alt="Church of Virus"></a>

a forum for rational discourse

a memetically engineered atheistic religion

a synthesis of religion and evolution

the best possible conceptual framework for living and thinking

a neo-cybernetic philosophy for the 21st century

Darwin's dangerous idea out of control

an extended phenotype of the Virion Council


:D


jaxom

if i seem hostile towards the meme, its because i am not very partial to social engineering
 
for instance

One of the distinguishing characteristics of SDi is the use of Wilber's All Quadrants/All Levels/All Lines model that offers a user-friendly way and methodology for integrating Spiral Dynamics into personal, organizational, and societal operations. When Wilber first began to describe such a strategy, he drew support and interest from a wide range of individuals, including President Clinton, Vice President Gore, and Jeb Bush, Governor of Florida. We have adapted this process in creating the 4Q/8L tapestry and technique in helping organizations align their efforts to produce desired results in a shorter time and with fewer resources. The 4Q/8L approach is now being used by inner city churches, school systems, and major corporations in the USA and abroad.

SDi goes much further than the first two SD phases in empowering, aligning, enhancing, and shaping other positive concepts, packages, and approaches as it works in the background and at deeper levels to influence humankind's Memetic Codes. This truly integral approach meshes many of the original SD concepts with other interests in such a way that it is never overtly recognized. In fact, this may be the arena where Spiral Dynamics is the most timely and relevant.

SDi generates a whole series of programs and projects that extend beyond both the Gravesian and the original Spiral Dynamics language and categories. At this stage the new Macro*Memetics Project, one that focuses specifically on large-scale systems change, has drawn a considerable amount of interest, and resulted in a recent presentation at the World Bank on the future of Afghanistan. Other such applications have produced meetings with White House officials, leaders in Congress, and sessions at No. 10 Downing Street in London. And, because of the global prestige of Ken Wilber, contacts come in on a daily basis from interested people around the world and from virtually every walk of life – the latest, for example, from as far as the Jammu/Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh in India, and Baltistan, Pakistan.

Further, there is growing interest in the critical importance of Vital Signs Monitors to detect, observe, and quantify the critical indicators that provide the needed information in "managing" large-scale interventions, change, and transformation. We have a close working relationship with John Petersen and the Arlington Institute (Virginia) in the design of these think tools, sophisticated decision-making technologies, and creative scenario development. We intend to literally write the book on VSM methodology in working with GIS-type software. This information will soon be displayed at www.vitalsignsmonitor.com.

Christopher Cooke in Yorkshire has developed the PeopleSCAN capacity to take the various SDi testing systems online, from the Values Test to the Change State Indicators. Others will be available over the next few months, and in several different world languages. These can now be seen (and utilized by certified SD practitioners) at www.onlinepeoplescan.com.

Finally, with the launch of the Global Values Network (www.globalvaluesnetwork.com) we are beginning a global effort to profile every country/culture/nation on the planet from a memetic perspective. This is an ambitious undertaking, one that would surely have caused Professor Clare Graves' eyes to sparkle – since in his age, before the microchip and end of the Cold War, he could only speculate ,on what great possibilities lurked beyond the horizon.

http://members.ams.chello.nl/f.visser3/wilber/sd-i.html

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.05/memetic.html


The savvy memetic engineer is able to isolate, study, and subtly manipulate the underlying values systems, symbolic balance and primal atavisms that unconsciously influence the individual psyche and collective identity. A highly educated but susceptible intelligentsia, worldwide travel, and information vectors like the Internet, cable television, and tabloid media, means that hysterical epidemics and disinformation campaigns may become more common. This warfare will be conducted using aesthetics, symbols, and doctrines as camouflage that will ultimately influence our cultural meme pool

http://www.disinfo.com/pages/dossier/id133/pg1/
 
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Spookz,

I’ve read a great deal of what you have posted and I recognize your more cynical inclination.

But from what I have studied so far I have seen what looks like clearly a new approach (or not so new anymore), or a new paradigm if you like, that has subtle and not so subtle differences to previous attempts to understand human communications in this context.

It is going to take me a while to experience the reality of the theory by actual practice, but so far it feels like a very powerful method for viewing the way ideas are proliferated, their source and their validity.

There is an enormous amount of material on the web which could keep me away from sciforums for a long time, so I will only nibble at it.
 
Wes,

yeah, I agree that it is intact, but the fact remains it is completely meaningless until percieved. The act of perception literally assignes the meaning. The essence of order can only exist in the human mind, even though the order iteself exists externally.
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As it seems with everything in the universe, everything is relative to something else. Order to some is disorder to others. Even space and time have no common frame of reference. It would appear there are no absolutes. To state that something is ordered without a comparison is to say nothing.

But a meaning only has value if it was intended. A chair, for example, has purpose, but the chair has no meaning, it does not communicate.

But I guess I essentially agree with you. We assign our own meanings as and when we feel the need, until then nothing has any meaning.
 
Cris, this actually came to me when contemplating the tree in the forest falling. It falls, it makes a sound, but the sound has no meaning unless there is an observer. If you think about it, meaning can only exist in the present. While a rock has been around for a gazillion years, as have been the atoms of your body, Meaning only truly exists right now. No now, wait... now. You get me I'm sure. It rides the timeline at t=p (the present) and exists nowhere else. So does order. If there is no observer, order is devoid of meaning.
 
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Everything is meaningless unless we are here to give it meaning.

Hehe, I forgot to have a point. Okay, well what I'm getting at it is that I believe that kind of perspective to have potential large scale implications as to physics, brains, etc. Maybe not, but hey, dare to dream.

Perception is an act of free will.
 
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