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My recollection is that the process in Snowcrash is different in a significant way. The language that hacks people's brains is a protolanguage which the people

My recollection is that the process in Snowcrash is different in a significant way. The language that hacks people's brains is a protolanguage which the people hearing and speaking it don't understand. That limits who can wield it for their own ends. It works on a subconscious level. Memes work on a conscious level in that people know and can explain what the meme is saying, and more people can create them.

ben_w 5y ago
> Memes work on a conscious level in that people know and can explain what the meme is saying, and more people can create them. Some memes work like that — pictures with text in particular — but “common sense” is also a set of memes, memes which are, in my experience, mostly approximations with failure modes that (in any given instance) most people are ignorant of, and where those with knowledge can exploit that ignorance. “Everything that goes up must come down“ except spacecraft. “You can’t be in two places at the same time” except where your body is straddling the border between the two places, or one place is nested inside the other, or places like the Hala'ib triangle where two countries both claim sovereignty. And stage magic, street magic, and scams like the shell game or Victorian seances, where “common sense” denies the audience in the first two cases and the victims in the last two any significant awareness of the effort put into the illusion. Or the homeopathy, Bach flower “remedies”, “healing” crystals, etc. that my mum believed in. And then you have cognitive stop signs and applause lights: politicians saying “for national security”, “think of the children”, “brexit means brexit”, or even just “9/11”.
- HPsquared 5y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A9 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3...

ben_w 5y ago

> Memes work on a conscious level in that people know and can explain what the meme is saying, and more people can create them. Some memes work like that — pictures with text in particular — but “common sense” is also a set of memes, memes which are, in my experience, mostly approximations with failure modes that (in any given instance) most people are ignorant of, and where those with knowledge can exploit that ignorance. “Everything that goes up must come down“ except spacecraft. “You can’t be in two places at the same time” except where your body is straddling the border between the two places, or one place is nested inside the other, or places like the Hala'ib triangle where two countries both claim sovereignty. And stage magic, street magic, and scams like the shell game or Victorian seances, where “common sense” denies the audience in the first two cases and the victims in the last two any significant awareness of the effort put into the illusion. Or the homeopathy, Bach flower “remedies”, “healing” crystals, etc. that my mum believed in. And then you have cognitive stop signs and applause lights: politicians saying “for national security”, “think of the children”, “brexit means brexit”, or even just “9/11”.

HPsquared 5y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A9 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3...