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I am immune. The trick is to become conscious of the process. Put another way: the immune mind operates on a higher level of abstraction and can objectively see
by bikamonki 11y ago
I am immune. The trick is to become conscious of the process. Put another way: the immune mind operates on a higher level of abstraction and can objectively see lower levels - you allow the memes to run in brain cycles but you are su and kill them. It's like when you are watching a movie and at some point you realize (feel) it is fake reality, then you learn to do it on purpose everytime: you watch the movie layer from above, it does kill the idea of the movie to fool you but it is a great mind workout to 'learn to be immune'.
- splawn 11y agoWhoops, it looks like you forgot to su and kill the Unix memes you are infected with.
- bikamonki 11y agoNothing wrong with such memes, they are like good bacteria. We are talking about memes that want you to take actions (coercive memes) like spending your money on one product/service, or join a religion and then bomb the temple of another religion.
- splawn 11y agoI guess my point is no one is truly immune from meme infection as its a side effect of having a brain, its not something you can control.... "Enjoy." "I'm lovin it."
- mirimir 11y agoSome memes immunize us against other memes. As a scientist, I'm immunized against all sorts of religious memes. But of course, carriers of religious memes are typically immunized (at least partially) against scientific memes.
- splawn 11y agoI do not disagree with your point. However, if a meme works on the unconscious as many ad campaigns supposedly do, then it seems to me like anyone that makes the claim that they are "immune" should viewed skeptically. No one wants to think that advertising affects their choices, yet advertising seems to work.
- mirimir 11y agoAdvertising works because most people are not consciously present most of the time. But one can learn to distinguish oneself from ones default thoughts, which are just recordings that get cued up by triggers. And be present.
- splawn 11y agoIt sounds like you are saying it is possible to escape cognitive bias, but that might just be my cognitive bias getting in the way. :)
- bikamonki 11y agoTrue, it was a bold claim on my end. In lack of complete information we will be tricked by subtle clues, like the first time you visit a town you'll be driven to one restaurant and not others bases on such clues triggering your already hard-wired bias. But for the most part I can tell, and ignore, ads/coercive memes. They don't annoy me at all, I truly just ignore them.
- mirimir 11y agoUnix meme aside, that's what I do. Awareness of manipulation reduces its effectiveness. Bringing in another meme, "I see the fnords!" ;) Hofstadter's stuff has also been instructive.
- bikamonki 11y agoIndeed! GEB has been a bible in this regard (pun intended).
- mirimir 11y ago:) Maybe it's better to start with I Am a Strange Loop.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Strange_Loop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Strange_Loop
- logfromblammo 11y agoBut once you see the fnords, you can't un-see them. The paid content masquerading as journalism is particularly irritating. You can also see similar bias in the regular news stories. There are lots of tricks you can use to color the facts of a story to get the audience to respond in a particular way. Lighting, framing, background, ambient sounds, subject placement--all these things can be employed for rhetorical effect. For instance, authority figures might be filmed at a slight upward angle from below the eye line, to make them appear slightly taller than anyone viewing the image. Fat people will be filmed from shoulders up if favored, from the waist up if unfavored, and from the neck down for vaguely defamatory stories. Pay attention to whose faces are shown with police mugshots, and whose faces are shown with license photos, military photos, school photos, or photos intended for other purposes. Watch out for different wording in captions and infobars. Listen for odd euphemisms that suddenly pop up in several places at once, or for different people who mysteriously say almost exactly the same things, as though they read from the same script. It's almost harder to see anything that isn't a fnord.
- mirimir 11y agoI beg to differ. It's the tricks that you describe that are the "fnords". And once you see them explicitly as tricks, they lose their power over you.