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The beef is that both fields struggle to be anything but descriptive. Both semiotic and memetic engineering are both a joke on par of "don't think of elephants

The beef is that both fields struggle to be anything but descriptive. Both semiotic and memetic engineering are both a joke on par of "don't think of elephants", much less science. Phlogiston was descriptive too. Arguably useful. Completely wrong as it turned out by serious study. The key problem with meme as a concept is that unlike biology with virion the concept cannot even predict how successfully the thing will spread out to where. Similarly with signs and how will they impact communication. The real test of an idea is what predictions it makes not how well it describes things.

xtiansimon 6y ago
> "...both fields struggle to be anything but descriptive ... The real test of an idea is what predictions it makes not how well it describes things." So you agree they are descriptive, and for you the test is the effectiveness of their predictions. In a scientific context these are both valid criticisms. Semiotics had it's brush with scientific rigor and suffered a similar blow as formalized mathematics suffered in the early 20th century. Of course mathematics survives not because its logically consistent, but because it's useful. Semiotics is also useful in many disciplines such as art, literature, design, communications, philosophy, where it provides a consistent language and framework to describe culture and language construction of meaning. Semiotics is sufficiently useful to generate new perspectives in short order (Greimas' Semiotic Square) is a neat trick. Memetics also has a number of neat tricks which are usefully descriptive of phenomena. Jokes aside, any work which is mostly descriptive suffers the same criticisms, and different descriptions of those disciplines also do justice, or work to discredit equally well. Not for nothing. I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything, but I do have more than a passing _blog_ fancy of these topics. I'm always looking for others who are equally interested, and maybe, like me still look for more better uses. (^_^) And I'm thinking there may be a few here on HN, because this post did get some upvotes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotic_square https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotic_square

xtiansimon 6y ago

> "...both fields struggle to be anything but descriptive ... The real test of an idea is what predictions it makes not how well it describes things." So you agree they are descriptive, and for you the test is the effectiveness of their predictions. In a scientific context these are both valid criticisms. Semiotics had it's brush with scientific rigor and suffered a similar blow as formalized mathematics suffered in the early 20th century. Of course mathematics survives not because its logically consistent, but because it's useful. Semiotics is also useful in many disciplines such as art, literature, design, communications, philosophy, where it provides a consistent language and framework to describe culture and language construction of meaning. Semiotics is sufficiently useful to generate new perspectives in short order (Greimas' Semiotic Square) is a neat trick. Memetics also has a number of neat tricks which are usefully descriptive of phenomena. Jokes aside, any work which is mostly descriptive suffers the same criticisms, and different descriptions of those disciplines also do justice, or work to discredit equally well. Not for nothing. I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything, but I do have more than a passing _blog_ fancy of these topics. I'm always looking for others who are equally interested, and maybe, like me still look for more better uses. (^_^) And I'm thinking there may be a few here on HN, because this post did get some upvotes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotic_square https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotic_square