Re: virus: Why not ramble

Wade T.Smith (wade_smith@harvard.edu)
Tue, 21 Oct 97 23:23:17 -0400


>I think that "suggestiveness" might be
>correlated to engineered memetic "suggestions" (that one could write a
>guided fantasy which has the characteristics deemed memetically sound and
>test this against a control fantasy...something like this).

Ah- back to the <streaking> experiment... (For which we really do need to
get someone to < streak>.)

So far, all the experiments along this line (including Dickiebird's
favorite- hidden phallus stuff) have shown negative correlations.

You would need to establish a success group- the group that <streaked>.
You would need the stimulus to produce the <streaking>. You would then
need some way to show that you have eliminated all variables except the
one (and what the hell is that?) you were looking for. IMHO, it's all too
vague to fashion a reliable experiment. And any analysis of previous
streakers is just that, analysis. (Not that such would not make a good
sociological paper- it would.) But I am not convinced such analysis gets
us anywhere near a meme. Halfway perhaps with every step....

We're (well, I) am still looking for get-to-the-point experiments.

Perhaps some psychoses? I think someone here or there suggested autism
studies. Studies involving behaviors and thinking patterns among
brain-damaged (trauma or congenital) persons is fascinating stuff. I'm
not sure we have a drug with enough precision of attack to proceed on
that front, but I am not at all pharmaceutically knowledgable.

The other (other?) hope I have for memetics (there has to be hope...) is
that it may be the catalyst to truly break down the bicamerality (hehe)
of the 'soft' and 'hard' sciences. There has been a surprising amount of
cross-dressing in recent decades, regardless of what those assholes the
deconstructivists are doing....

Maybe it's time for a real multicultural approach to science- showing
that it is the only umbrella over everything, including the grass huts of
the shamans, and the glass huts of the physicists.

*****************
Wade T. Smith
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wade_smith@harvard.edu | shouldn't do to a god."
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