Re: virus: Levels

Dave Pape (davepape@dial.pipex.com)
Wed, 19 Feb 1997 13:16:51 GMT


At 16:54 18/02/97 -1000, Peter wrote:
>Kenneth Boyd wrote:
>>
>>Considering that hypocrisy is a species-wide psychology trait of humans,
>>is it at all surprising that often "looking for answers" means "I want
>>*this*, but I don't have evidence supporting it"? Of course, this means
>>that the subconscious often totally deludes the conscious mind on this issue.
>
>Not quite pertinent, but I've always felt that human brain had a built in
>hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is the name of the species strategy.

Not "the" species strategy, but certainly "a" species strategy. Hypocrisy
and lying are just allowing recessive memes to be transmitted from your
memetic ecology- a trick learned from instances where doing so is seen to
gain you more benefit than your dominant memes transmitting.

>The brain is
>designed so that different
>individuals can hold opposing beliefs, filling different niches.

Don't think I'd take this point without rewrites... I'd say that brains hold
opposing beliefs because their memes fill different memetic ecological
niches, but there's no design going on... different memetic niches are
possible because no-one exists in the same memetic environment (same sensory
input, same neural wiring, same social situation, same incoming memes).

>The
>species doesn't care who is right or wrong, just so one of them succeeds.

I agree that there's no care involved. Don't believe in right or wrong
though. Believe in competitive advantage...

Dave Pape
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