virus: Scientology

KMO prime (kmoprime@juno.com)
Wed, 23 Oct 1996 16:32:17 EDT


On Wed, 23 Oct 1996 11:27:53 -0400 (EDT) jporter@shire.btg.com (John
Porter) writes:

>> In
>> fact, Scientology's propagative success can be taken as a measure or
>how
>> useful a model of human cognition they employ.
>
>This may very well be so.
>So, to get an idea of "how useful a model of human cognition they
>employ",
>we observe their "propagative success".
>My observation is that they actually have a very poor "propagative
>success".
>Therefore, I conclude that they employ not-very-useful model of human
>cognition.

If you look at the number of people infected, Sciotolgy isn't doing as
Islam or political correctness (still a heck of a lot better than the
CoV), but if you look at the level of control it achieves in those hosts
it does manage to infect, it's very successful. They milk outrageious
sums of money out of poeple. What about Am Shin Rikyo? Whould you say
they'd experienced much propagative success? I'm not sure how their raw
numbers compare to Scientology but again, the level of control it manages
in infected hosts is considerable. I don't think one convert to Pat
Robertson-style Christianity in Sierra Leone should count equally
towards the propagative success of a meme-complex as a recruit to Am Shin
Rikyo from Tokyo University (Japan's top University) or to Scientolgy
from the ranks of Hollywood super-stars, e.g. John Travolta, who's got
the pull to get a star-packed film produced that is heavily laden with
Scientology memes.

Take care. -KMO