Re: virus: memes, yay, lets do it.

Dave Pape (davepape@dial.pipex.com)
Sun, 13 Jun 1999 15:07:19 +0100

At 22:40 11/06/99 +0300, Toxic Waste wrote:

>> What do you imagine you'd learn, [CLIP]

>Probably nothing, but I wanna see if someone can draw some
>math out of observing and studying them.

Have you read any of Aaron Lynch's stuff? He's written a book ("Thought Contagion") in which he has a go at doing some calculus about memetic infection rates. He posts to the Journal of Memetics mailing list, but there's plenty of people who object to his ideas, saying things like "how the fuck do you measure who's been infected by a meme and who hasn't, without directly asking them about the idea, in which case you'll help them to be infected by the meme?" and other such encouraging stuff.

>The people you list are known for their mathematical inadequisies.
>They know by intuition, but there are no clear strategies, principles
>or "laws of the meme" common and applicable to all.

>The Law of the Meme!