RE: virus: Honesty vs. Parasitism

Richard Brodie (RBrodie@brodietech.com)
Thu, 6 Feb 1997 14:56:03 -0800


David, I truly appreciate your hanging in with us. The reason you feel
attacked is that you are on the verge of a Level-3 breakthrough and your
Level-2 mindset (ego) is turning its defense mechanisms on full bore. I
believe most of the participants here appreciate your honesty and
rationality and simply want to share the value of the memetics paradigm
with you.

David Rosdeitcher wrote:

> Most of the posts that attack me do not attack what I am
>communicating or
>trying to communicate. They are simply dishonest methods of creating
>confusion
>and uncertainty. As I said before, they attack the memes that are
>contained in
>what I am saying, not what I am actually saying. The people who do this
>are
>dishonest-they are deliberately trying to confuse and distort reality
>for others
>while gaining a cheap feeling of power. Examples of this can be shown
>by such
>people as Martz and Dave Pape.

One symptom of cult membership is lack of a sense of humor. As
Hofstadter pointed out in his incredible Pulitzer-prizewinning book
Goedel Escher Bach (available at the Amazon.Com Memetics Bookstore,
http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/books.htm), level-jumping is FUNNY!
You have correctly sensed that something unusual is going on in the
posts challenging your self-consistent belief system. Perhaps the basic
point that needs to be reiterated (I believe Vicki made it already) is
that there are an infinite number of self-consistent belief systems.
Just because yours cannot be refuted doesn't make it TRUE. In fact, I
would assert, though it can't be proved, that NONE of them are true.
Some are, however, more useful than others.

> In a recent post in which I said that there are 2 camps (2 methods
>of
>thinking) going on in CoV and then used the meme at the end of the long
>post,
>"This is War!", Martz responds, with another meme, "I'm a conscientous
>objector". This is an example of attacking a meme, not what I am
>saying.

This is a joke.

> Yesterday, when I made the point that some people in this group are
>viruses
>by not taking their own position, just attacking parasitically the
>memes of
>others, Dave Pape responds that he's not a virus, but a host since he's
>a host
>for various memes. In this context, he is a dishonest virus. Examples
>of
>attacking fragments or memes of ideas are so common throughout this
>list, that
>pointing them out would be like pointing out water in the Pacific
>Ocean.

What people are trying to do, David, is show you that the Level-3 mind
HAS no fixed position -- just useful models that may be flipped among at
will.

> Just as in society, dishonest criminals are dependent on leeching
>off honest
>working people, dishonest "memebers" depend on other people providing
>ideas and
>making assertions. Becoming dependent on attacking memes prevents
>people from
>thinking original thoughts since they must rely on the minds of others.
>

At some level no thought is original. At some higher level, every
combination, application, or expression in context of a thought is
original.

Memes, they come and go,
Pollen floating flow'r to flow'r
Nectar for the mind.

> I expect the next response to be along the lines that my thoughts
>aren't
>original. -David

Look! Decide whether you want to learn, want to spread your virus to us,
or want to play poker with us!

We're probably amenable to all three?
>
Richard Brodie RBrodie@brodietech.com +1.206.688.8600
CEO, Brodie Technology Group, Inc., Bellevue, WA, USA
http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie
Do you know what a "meme" is?
http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/meme.htm
>