[CLIP]
> > Second meme: and no amount of _______ (fill in blanks) and _________ is
> > going to bring them (replace with group of your choice) around.
> >
> > Both are effective in shutting people up.
>
> Does this invalidate the meme? All I'm saying is if a person cannot
> grasp certain "basic" concepts then reading a book called "How to grasp
> basic concepts" isn't going to help. I believe this conforms with
> classic memetics : our resident memes govern our absorption of new memes
> therefore my argument is our level of intelligence governs the
> complexity of those memes to begin with. To put it in the most offensive
> terms : you can't bombard a simple mind with complex concepts and hope
> they stick. Look at me, two guys brighter than me so far have pointed
> out the errors of my arguments, yet I resist.
No, it does NOT invalidate the meme.
It's easy to reach for that metameme even when it's invalid. That's the
real problem with it. By itself, the structure can only give [after
heuristics] a plausiblity as to its validity. Sometimes those heuristics
are inaccurate; more rigorous criteria are necessary to evaluate its
validity. [For instance, a bioware alteration that drastically alters
relative efforts of processing can disrupt socialization fairly
thoroughly, to the point where the 'autolearn' techniques that are
imprinted into us don't work.]
It's the same problem that plagues mathematics: the validity of a system
can NEVER be evaluated within that system. The mathematical logicians spend
all of this time [1890's+] sweeping the validity question into set/class
theory, figure out how to stop Russell's Barber from undoing all of
their work, and STILL can't find out how to get outside of set theory to
show it works!
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/ Towards the conversion of data into information....
/
/ Kenneth Boyd
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