From: rhinoceros (rhinoceros@freemail.gr)
Date: Mon Sep 23 2002 - 10:15:34 MDT
[Joe Dees]
Memesets are not automatically false simply because they are memesets. In fact, the exigencies of interrelating with the environing world, and the differential reproductive rates engendered (pun intended) by more successful vs. less successful environmental interrelations, facilitate the evolution of memesets more closely adherent to the referent reality they purport to represent.
[rhinoceros]
Of course, reality is only one, and a particular "more successful" memeset eventually prevails. Given the different competing memesets (points of view) we encounter in practice, does that mean that everyone should try to recognize and single out those "more successful" memeset and ride along with them? My own answer is no.
Also: Apparently, the reproduction rate of a memeset is largely affected by memetic mechanisms (e.g. mass media) which are controlled by other memesets with a very loose cognitively affinity to them. An example you might find easy to use could be: The USSR is going to civilize Afghanistan. To which the mujahedin reply: The mujahedin are going to liberate Afghanistan from allah-less communism. So, there seem to be a lot of memesets that don't compete based on their own merits. Can we say that a memeset which has won not because of its own merits is a successful memeset?
[Joe Dees]
This trend is most obviously observed in the advance of scientific knowledge. A memeset can actually achieve optimization with respect to its represented reality; for instance - can anyone imagine an improvement in the multiplication tables?
[rhinoceros]
I suspect that the (by definition) replicator aspect of memes, which differentiates them from other similar concepts such as "ideas", makes them less related to cognitive concepts such as mathematics and more related to the adoption and use of mathematics.
[Joe Dees]
However, there are many memesets that have exploited and thus hijacked the use of the human drives of sex, survival and community; religions, of all forms, have historically despite their differeing yet universally manifest fallacies, done so unfortunately all too well.
[rhinoceros]
It has been made clear that the success of a memeset does not depend on its cognitive content. Can we say that these hijacking memesets also belong to the "more successful" memesets?
[Joe Dees]
The purpose of Virus is to create a religion that adheres to fact; that is, one that pushes the proper sex, survival and community buttons withpout having to suffer the downside of embracing logical or empirically evidentiary fallacies in order to do so. If such a religion can be enginneered - one that possesses all of the assets and none of the liabilities of the traditional religions - it will inevitably outperform its lternatives and win the Darwinian struggle between belief forms. The major task facing this Church is how to appeal to people without lying; that is, how to frame our appeal so that we offer them sex, survival and community without deception.
[rhinoceros]
>From the above, it follows that the cognitive value of the Virian religion is not necessarily what is going to make it successful. More likely, it would have to cover a "market demand". Is that so?
You have proposed that pushing the proper sex, survival and community buttons is what makes a religion successful. It would be interested to find out what the competition is in these three domains, sex, survival and community, and what the Virian memes themselves and their reproduction mechanisms would be.
Of course, there is also the possibility that we have missed some ingredient of a successful religion. For example, couldn't a crusade and the associated shared guilt be a requirement. Do we know of any clean and bloodless religions?
Trivia: Is the struggle Darwinian (acquired memes are not inherited) or Lamarckian (acquired memes are inherited).
---- This message was posted by rhinoceros to the Virus 2002 board on Church of Virus BBS. <http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=51;action=display;threadid=26717>
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