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You're casting an over-broad definition of Memetics. Long before Dawkins, we had things like "archetypes" in Jungian psychology, "gestalts" in gestalt psycholog

by xamuel 7y ago

You're casting an over-broad definition of Memetics. Long before Dawkins, we had things like "archetypes" in Jungian psychology, "gestalts" in gestalt psychology, "signs" in semiotics. And many other similar notions that would fit what you're describing. Memes became a "thing", academically, because Dawkins was a successful pop writer. They've had about as much genuine scholarly impact as Deepak Chopra! That's on the academic side. On the practical side, sure, marketing firms and political campaigns have attempted to hijack image captions, with varying (usually low) success. (It's not like Trump employs a bunch of scientists to post image captions on r/T_D. Love it or hate it, that's grass roots.) All of this would have been done whether people had decided to latch it to Memetics or not. It's not like image macros wouldn't have become a thing if "Selfish Gene" hadn't been written.

mistermann 7y ago
> You're casting an over-broad definition of Memetics. I am, or the author of the wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics) where I quoted that definition from? > Long before Dawkins, we had things like "archetypes" in Jungian psychology, "gestalts" in gestalt psychology, "signs" in semiotics. >> Archetypes were a concept introduced by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, who believed that archetypes were models of people, behaviors, or personalities. Archetypes, he suggested, were inborn tendencies that play a role in influencing human behavior. >> Gestalt psychology is an attempt to understand the laws behind the ability to acquire and maintain meaningful perceptions in an apparently chaotic world. The central principle of gestalt psychology is that the mind forms a global whole with self-organizing tendencies through the law of prägnanz. This principle maintains that when the human mind (perceptual system) forms a percept or "gestalt", the whole has a reality of its own, independent of the parts. >> In semiotics, a sign is anything that communicates a meaning that is not the sign itself to the interpreter of the sign. The meaning can be intentional such as a word uttered with a specific meaning, or unintentional, such as a symptom being a sign of a particular medical condition. Signs can communicate through any of the senses, visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or taste. Regardless, refer to this phenomenon using whatever words you'd like. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. > They've had about as much genuine scholarly impact as Deepak Chopra! I don't disagree with your assertion that ~"multiple people have recognized and described this phenomenon within human psychology and assigned it a variety of labels", or that there has so far been little noteworthy impact. My interest is about the potential of this knowledge. I initially wrote: "I believe memetics is one of the most impactful but underappreciated ideas out there today, and plausibly explains the bizarre polarization of opinions on a wide variety of hot button current topics. Everyone perceives that their opinion/knowledge is based on facts, but very few are even slightly aware that their knowledge is actually based on a hodge podge of memes, each with varying levels of truthiness." If I had more accurately described my beliefs like so: "I believe memetics is one of the most important but underappreciated ideas out there today, and plausibly explains the bizarre polarization of opinions on a wide variety of hot button current topics. Everyone perceives that their opinion/knowledge is based on facts, but very few are even slightly aware that their knowledge is actually based on a hodge podge of memes, each with varying levels of truthiness. If we could somehow manage to get a significant portion of the population to truly realize that much of what they believe, what they consider to be fact, their mental model of reality, is largely made up of meaningfully incorrect approximations, the impact on the world could be substantial." ....would you still disagree? If so, could you note which specific parts of my words you disagree with?
- xamuel 7y ago
  I think at last we can agree on your more accurate description of your beliefs, just with the sole exception that we could simplify it by the removal of the first sentence. That is, I fully agree with the following: Everyone perceives that their opinion/knowledge is based on facts, but very few are even slightly aware that their knowledge is actually based on a hodge podge of memes, each with varying levels of truthiness. If we could somehow manage to get a significant portion of the population to truly realize that much of what they believe, what they consider to be fact, their mental model of reality, is largely made up of meaningfully incorrect approximations, the impact on the world could be substantial.
  - mistermann 7y ago
    Hmmmm....on one hand this seems like all a silly misunderstanding, basically a pedantic difference of "impactful" vs "potentially impactful". Except removing the first sentence strips the magnitude of importance component from my statement, which is one of the most important aspects of my interest. I wonder if I can make my meaning even clearer (more difficult to find a way to misunderstand)....how about if I phrase it this way: "If global polarization of opinions on a wide variety of topics (some of which can be argued to be an existential threat to human existence on earth) starts to suddenly increase, and it is learned that opinions on both sides of most disagreements are based on objectively incorrect beliefs, it would be extremely valuable (possibly up to restoring the previous likelihood of long-term sustainability of human life on the planet) to find a way to get people to fully realize their beliefs are false, so that reasonable, collaborative negotiations can be established to begin solving our various problems." In the spirit of conversational efficiency, perhaps it is helpful to note explicitly that my intent is to learn your opinion on how important/valuable you personally believe reducing the amount of delusional beliefs held by individuals in society might be, and that I am happy to continue redirecting the conversation back to that specific topic as many times as is necessary.
    - xamuel 7y ago
      I'm in full agreement with the quoted paragraph. And I would say reducing the amount of delusional beliefs held by individuals is extremely, urgently important. As for this pedantic discussion, maybe this parable will help. A man goes to Huffington Post and reads an article about the dangers of global warming. Fully convinced, he goes shouting from the rooftops: "Huffington Post has the potential to be one of the most important publications in all of history! It is urgently important that we stop global warming!" You see, that first sentence which the man shouted is distracting and confused. He should have just jumped straight to the second one. Just to be clear, in this parable, the man represents you, "global warming" represents "everyone is operating under delusional beliefs", and "Huffington Post" represents Memetics.

by xamuel 7y ago

mistermann 7y ago

> You're casting an over-broad definition of Memetics. I am, or the author of the wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics) where I quoted that definition from? > Long before Dawkins, we had things like "archetypes" in Jungian psychology, "gestalts" in gestalt psychology, "signs" in semiotics. >> Archetypes were a concept introduced by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, who believed that archetypes were models of people, behaviors, or personalities. Archetypes, he suggested, were inborn tendencies that play a role in influencing human behavior. >> Gestalt psychology is an attempt to understand the laws behind the ability to acquire and maintain meaningful perceptions in an apparently chaotic world. The central principle of gestalt psychology is that the mind forms a global whole with self-organizing tendencies through the law of prägnanz. This principle maintains that when the human mind (perceptual system) forms a percept or "gestalt", the whole has a reality of its own, independent of the parts. >> In semiotics, a sign is anything that communicates a meaning that is not the sign itself to the interpreter of the sign. The meaning can be intentional such as a word uttered with a specific meaning, or unintentional, such as a symptom being a sign of a particular medical condition. Signs can communicate through any of the senses, visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or taste. Regardless, refer to this phenomenon using whatever words you'd like. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. > They've had about as much genuine scholarly impact as Deepak Chopra! I don't disagree with your assertion that ~"multiple people have recognized and described this phenomenon within human psychology and assigned it a variety of labels", or that there has so far been little noteworthy impact. My interest is about the potential of this knowledge. I initially wrote: "I believe memetics is one of the most impactful but underappreciated ideas out there today, and plausibly explains the bizarre polarization of opinions on a wide variety of hot button current topics. Everyone perceives that their opinion/knowledge is based on facts, but very few are even slightly aware that their knowledge is actually based on a hodge podge of memes, each with varying levels of truthiness." If I had more accurately described my beliefs like so: "I believe memetics is one of the most important but underappreciated ideas out there today, and plausibly explains the bizarre polarization of opinions on a wide variety of hot button current topics. Everyone perceives that their opinion/knowledge is based on facts, but very few are even slightly aware that their knowledge is actually based on a hodge podge of memes, each with varying levels of truthiness. If we could somehow manage to get a significant portion of the population to truly realize that much of what they believe, what they consider to be fact, their mental model of reality, is largely made up of meaningfully incorrect approximations, the impact on the world could be substantial." ....would you still disagree? If so, could you note which specific parts of my words you disagree with?

xamuel 7y ago
I think at last we can agree on your more accurate description of your beliefs, just with the sole exception that we could simplify it by the removal of the first sentence. That is, I fully agree with the following: Everyone perceives that their opinion/knowledge is based on facts, but very few are even slightly aware that their knowledge is actually based on a hodge podge of memes, each with varying levels of truthiness. If we could somehow manage to get a significant portion of the population to truly realize that much of what they believe, what they consider to be fact, their mental model of reality, is largely made up of meaningfully incorrect approximations, the impact on the world could be substantial.
- mistermann 7y ago
  Hmmmm....on one hand this seems like all a silly misunderstanding, basically a pedantic difference of "impactful" vs "potentially impactful". Except removing the first sentence strips the magnitude of importance component from my statement, which is one of the most important aspects of my interest. I wonder if I can make my meaning even clearer (more difficult to find a way to misunderstand)....how about if I phrase it this way: "If global polarization of opinions on a wide variety of topics (some of which can be argued to be an existential threat to human existence on earth) starts to suddenly increase, and it is learned that opinions on both sides of most disagreements are based on objectively incorrect beliefs, it would be extremely valuable (possibly up to restoring the previous likelihood of long-term sustainability of human life on the planet) to find a way to get people to fully realize their beliefs are false, so that reasonable, collaborative negotiations can be established to begin solving our various problems." In the spirit of conversational efficiency, perhaps it is helpful to note explicitly that my intent is to learn your opinion on how important/valuable you personally believe reducing the amount of delusional beliefs held by individuals in society might be, and that I am happy to continue redirecting the conversation back to that specific topic as many times as is necessary.
  - xamuel 7y ago
    I'm in full agreement with the quoted paragraph. And I would say reducing the amount of delusional beliefs held by individuals is extremely, urgently important. As for this pedantic discussion, maybe this parable will help. A man goes to Huffington Post and reads an article about the dangers of global warming. Fully convinced, he goes shouting from the rooftops: "Huffington Post has the potential to be one of the most important publications in all of history! It is urgently important that we stop global warming!" You see, that first sentence which the man shouted is distracting and confused. He should have just jumped straight to the second one. Just to be clear, in this parable, the man represents you, "global warming" represents "everyone is operating under delusional beliefs", and "Huffington Post" represents Memetics.