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We used to call that 'culture'. In practice now, memes are exactly what the GP says: manifestation of simpletons communicating on the Internet.
by varjag 6y ago
We used to call that 'culture'.
In practice now, memes are exactly what the GP says: manifestation of simpletons communicating on the Internet.
- ethanbond 6y agoWhile a culture is just a collection of memes, I think considering it as memes and not a static/permanent “culture” gets you a lot more leverage to think about the world. For example, if you just say, “that’s our culture,” it’s very tempting to accept it as an intrinsic property of your society/company/team. If you say, “that’s the collection of dominant memes for this particular environment at this particular time,” it gives you some avenues to start 1) decomposing a monolithic culture into its component pieces and 2) explore why those particular memes are so dominant in the particular environment. The latter route, IMO, will expose many more levers for you to play with if you were to want to, say, modify a culture.
- baddox 6y agoWe also knew that children tend to look like their parents long before we knew about genes.
- varjag 6y agoGenetics is a falsifiable scientific theory with predictive force. Memetics, or whatever you are willing to call it, is not. Mostly a way for people with frog avatars to sound important.