virus: RE: New paper: Why the `Thought Contagion' Metaphor is Retarding the Progress of Memetics - D

Richard Brodie ()
Wed, 26 Aug 1998 09:05:14 -0700


Responding to Derek Gatherer...

It is very tempting to redefine our model of memetics to one that seems
easier to study. But isn't it better to ignore how easy or difficult it is
to study and instead to use the model that we think most accurately reflects
reality?

When you say that you want to leave the study of beliefs to cognitive
psychologists, are you saying that the behavior caused by beliefs is not
memetic? So, for instance, it wouldn't be useful to do a memetic study of
religion except for replicable artifacts such as bibles and church steeples?
I for one am still scared after reading Bloom's "The Lucifer Principle"
about the spread of the "Kill the infidels" meme. And to say it's only
present in those who actually do the killing is to ignore the building
potential an millions of minds that could precipitate in action at any
moment.

Belief, attitude, opinion, emotional association -- all these influence
behavior, or you wouldn't have any cognitive psychologists. They are all
memes, the software of the mind. To argue that they are not memes unless
some obvious behavior manifests at your convenience is like saying that your
computer doesn't have a virus unless and until your hard disk crashes.
(Today is the 26th -- I hope that everyone I'm sending this to can read it!)

There are no guarantees in social science. No matter how many times a
teacher repeats a statement, there is no guarantee that every child will get
it. No matter how many times an advertiser repeats a campaign, there's no
guarantee that every viewer will buy the product. No matter how many times
my book appears on Oprah, there's no guarantee that everyone will find
themselves with their own copy so that I can further infect them with
memetics memes. But let me tell you, you can bet the farm that in every one
of these cases the memes will spread to SOME statistical portion of the
audience.

What factors make these memes more likely to spread once they are placed in
front of people's minds? That's one exciting field of study for memetics.
How do you create a self-replicating subculture that delivers a desired
message to ever more minds? That's another thing to study. (The Church of
Virus list, which this note is cc'ed to, is a group that is playing with the
idea of creating a "religion" that spreads reality-reflecting memes)

Is anyone here doing any scientific experiments? THAT would be interesting.

Richard Brodie richard@brodietech.com http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/
Author, "Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme"
http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/votm.htm
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