Re: virus: Re: What the hell is a false meme?

Dave Pape (davepape@dial.pipex.com)
Sun, 9 Feb 1997 21:20:02 GMT


At 23:58 07/02/97 -0800, Lior wrote:

>I'd say "true" memes are memes which mesh comfortably with (or is
>already a
>component of) your personal memetic ecological structure, and "false"
>memes
>are memes which don't.
>
>On a social scale, a "true" meme would be a meme which meshes
>comfortably
>with (or is already a component of) the memetic metastructure of that
>social
>group's shared culture. And remember, by that I mean every thought,
>positive
>or negative, which is shared around in that social group.
>----
>So may we say that: False Meme - A meme which cannot form a coherent
>link to the ruling memesphere.

That's pretty near how I see it, yeh. Erm... a bit of clarification here...
I enclosed "true" and "false" in quotes, trying to indeicate that the memes
themselves aren't really true/false, but that the people hosting them refer
to those ideas as being true/false.

>Oh shit. This looks like me trying to give another smartass answer! It
>isn't
>though, it's actually the genuinely dominant world-view memes in my
>memespace right now.
>----
>The true\false adjective is rather weak on memes. The connotation of
>true with positive and false with negative only adds to the confusion.
>Let's just avoid using that term and that's it.
>Objections anyone?

I agree. How should we replace it? Could we say things like "that meshes
with me", or "that doesn't fit what I think"? I kind of try to preface a lot
of my claims with "I think", and I think I'd like to try using
"agree/disagree with" rather than "is true/false" in the future.

Also lets you say "well, I /kind of/ disagree, but I'm not sure why" rather
than saying "that statement was between 60 and 80% false, but I don't know why".

Dave Pape
===============================================================================
If you mapped memespace onto a 2D plane, then made a 3-D graph with
Activation Level as the vertical axis, and animated shots of the graph over
time, it'd look like the progress of some crazy Hokusai ocean.

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