5 ms·

Enlighten me, what does it mean that truth and knowledge are anonymous automata?

ForHackernews 4y ago
It sounds to me like a variant on the idea of a "meme" (in its original sense): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme Consider that ideas (even facts!) might be like mind-viruses: you could imagine they propagate themselves in human minds, but are not actually produced by those minds. What if human minds are just the substrate?
- bryanrasmussen 4y ago
  at some point some ideas have to be created by some individual human who then transfers it to others, if we do not agree that the idea created by the individual human is created in their mind then we have to come up with another explanation of what they are created in. If we assume that a new idea, never before propagated creates itself we should have an explanation for how that works, which memetics does not have a current explanation for.
  - ForHackernews 4y ago
    IMHO, this depends what you consider a "new" idea: ideas mutate and change, they are combined or applied in a different context but rarely (perhaps never) do they arise sui generis from nothing. Analogously, viruses mutate and change in their hosts, and at some point their lineage diverges enough that we declare it a "new" virus - but this is a categorization applied by an observer, and somewhat false. Perhaps the earliest "ur ideas" were something like instinctive emotions. Even very simple creatures seek food and avoid noxious stimuli. Is hunger an idea? Maybe from hunger arose desire, and from desire arose searching, and from searching arose planning... Ad astra per fame.
    - schoen 4y ago
      Per famem, because per governs the accusative, right?
  - naasking 4y ago
    > If we assume that a new idea, never before propagated creates itself we should have an explanation for how that works, which memetics does not have a current explanation for. The same way viruses change: usually recombination, but sometimes random mutation. Yes this happens in a human mind, just like viruses change within cells. The point is to focus on ideas as self-propagating and humans as merely vessels, rather than the other way around as people usually think about them.
- MarkPNeyer 4y ago
  We can apply this same notion of thinking to ideas like “mark neyer” or “the neyer family”. This closes the loop, though - who I am is both an idea and a substrate for ideas, at the same time.
- TrapLord_Rhodo 4y ago
  There is no anti-memetics division! interesting book on memes.

It sounds to me like a variant on the idea of a "meme" (in its original sense): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme Consider that ideas (even facts!) might be like mind-viruses: you could imagine they propagate themselves in human minds, but are not actually produced by those minds. What if human minds are just the substrate?

bryanrasmussen 4y ago
at some point some ideas have to be created by some individual human who then transfers it to others, if we do not agree that the idea created by the individual human is created in their mind then we have to come up with another explanation of what they are created in. If we assume that a new idea, never before propagated creates itself we should have an explanation for how that works, which memetics does not have a current explanation for.
- ForHackernews 4y ago
  IMHO, this depends what you consider a "new" idea: ideas mutate and change, they are combined or applied in a different context but rarely (perhaps never) do they arise sui generis from nothing. Analogously, viruses mutate and change in their hosts, and at some point their lineage diverges enough that we declare it a "new" virus - but this is a categorization applied by an observer, and somewhat false. Perhaps the earliest "ur ideas" were something like instinctive emotions. Even very simple creatures seek food and avoid noxious stimuli. Is hunger an idea? Maybe from hunger arose desire, and from desire arose searching, and from searching arose planning... Ad astra per fame.
  - schoen 4y ago
    Per famem, because per governs the accusative, right?
- naasking 4y ago
  > If we assume that a new idea, never before propagated creates itself we should have an explanation for how that works, which memetics does not have a current explanation for. The same way viruses change: usually recombination, but sometimes random mutation. Yes this happens in a human mind, just like viruses change within cells. The point is to focus on ideas as self-propagating and humans as merely vessels, rather than the other way around as people usually think about them.
MarkPNeyer 4y ago
We can apply this same notion of thinking to ideas like “mark neyer” or “the neyer family”. This closes the loop, though - who I am is both an idea and a substrate for ideas, at the same time.
TrapLord_Rhodo 4y ago
There is no anti-memetics division! interesting book on memes.