"Idea" and "meme" have the same meaning but different connotations. "Meme" is generally used to de-emphasize the importance of thinking and rationality. The hair style and pants/skirt length of teenagers are the classic examples of memes -- they are apparently random parameters of fashion whose spread can be easily seen. (Much to the dismay of the parents!)
I personally distrust this "m" word because it is so often used for anti-intellectual purposes. So for example, fashionable cultural studies types like to talk about memes because they don't believe in objective truth. In the extreme case, some of them argue that Newton's Laws are just an oppressive meme and ought to be replaced with something more liberating. Fortunately, most of them are (a little) more sensible than that.
The scientific weakness of this study of memes is that there is no rule for why they do or do not spread. Genes and natural selection are two great tastes that go well together, since creatures with bad genes die. But if a person has a really dumb idea and gets killed, (e.g., lies down in the middle of a two-way street) then whether it is imitated or not depends on whether they get on the evening news. And although we have made wonderful progress in the sciences in the last hundred years, the evening news is still beyond explanation.
In this article, you can see that the author has used the connotation of memes to imply that the opposition relies on a sort of brainwashing rather than a fair exchange of ideas. His intentions are good, but I think he should've left the memes out of it. The whole meme thing is why he says that "the battle over filters... is just one of implanting the right ideas in enough people's minds." Or for example, his phrase "Memetic Warfare," doesn't pack as much punch translated into "War of Ideas." I guess the most accurate title he could have chosen is "Ideological Warfare." Anyway, you sure don't need to invoke memes to state his very legitimate complaint: the opposition is deliberately lying about the effectiveness of their so-called solution.
Anyway, if you actually want to read about the transmission of ideas, don't read The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, since it's
long (like this post)
boring (like this post)
mostly about genes, not memes
Instead, read Bellwether by Connie Willis. It's a lot more fun, intelligent, and only costs half as much! And at least she can distinguish between ideas and fads.
The real difference between atheists and theists is that atheists know how to apply Occam's Razor.
If this were really that simple, then it would seem Occam wasn't very good at using his own razor, since he was a Franciscan monk and theologian! If you think it ought to be so obvious, why didn't he notice or something?
Nuclear weapons are a big hoax - but not necessarily a malicious one. If two allied nations with different philosophical views are eyeing each other nervously over the body of a defeated enemy, and the populace of both nations are calmouring for war, then what do you do?
You tell them that NUKES will rain out of the sky if either side attacks, and several horrible things will happen to them. This worked wonderfully until the Soviet government collapsed, and peace and joy spread throughout the world. With the fall of the Evil Empire, surely the people would see that there was no more need for a standing army, no need bully others, and there would be no need for the nukes to exist.
Belief in the nukes was also a way of controlling the masses so they wouldn't burn too many bras or ROTC buildings (2 of the most popular combustibles) or overthrow the current government and cause anarchy. I thank nukes for helping the US get past those first few years of postwar civilization without destroying itself, but enough is enough.
Now the people know enough not to start another world war, and governments can do more harm than good, nukes have become obsolete like my 486 that hasn't worked in years. It scares the hell out of me to see so many people blindly following a "charismatic leader" who pretends to have the nukes on his side, instead of thinking for themselves. I don't know of any President or Prime Minister that doesn't skim some pork off the top of the barrels (and some humidor contents I might add) and the presence of multiple nations pretending to have developed these so-called nukes, or stealing nonexistent `warhead technologies' has just turned the whole thing into a big war of denial. Nukes, please stop messing with us so that science can make the world a better place.
"If the bible and christianity (or similar for any religion) can continually question and challenge and dispute its own doctorines and continue to survive and maintain logical cohesion, I'll believe that the religion has merit. But if everything is True by Decree and questions are met with hostility or silence, then this I believe speaks volumes about the convictions of the religious followers own belief in his system."
You portray scientific research on the whole as a pristine and selfless quest for truth. You say that "science accepts its own debunking of some of its former doctorines and what remains gains strength." You are correct that scientists can be at least as egomaniacal as the rest of us. But you don't seem to understand that they can be, and have been, at least as suppressive as any mainstream American religion. In particular, you seem to think that scientists are open to rational debate, when in religion "everything is True by Decree and questions are met with hostility or silence." But within the scientific community, scientists have been as eager to silence opposition as anyone else.
Do you know of the feud between English and Continental mathematics? A ridiculous dispute about who invented the calculus set back mathematics by decades. The English schools stubbornly taught the antiquated system of fluxions because it had been invented by Newton, while the other Europeans used differentials.
In the nineteenth century: Kronecker did everything he could to humiliate Cantor, and did succeed in destroying his career. (Cantor was the *inventor* of topology.) Cantor never saw his opinions accepted by the community. Plenty of slashdot posters can tell you how the brilliant scientist Tesla was cheated, both during his life and after his death. He has never really been vindicated. Oppenheimer was isolated from the community in the 50's for his stance against nuclear weapons. Teller is largely isolated from the community *today* for his support of arms buildup. And although you can ceratinly argue that cold fusion was correctly debunked, the reaction to *legitimate* research in the anomalous heating associated with Pons and Fleischmans' apparatus was, and is, shameful.
Furthermore, science does not free you from the need for faith. I believe in the results of quantum mechanics and special relativity partly because I have tested some of them myself in classes. However, most people cannot say as much. To them the laws of physics may as well have been brought down from on high. The average person does not participate in your scientific quest for truth. Even for those people who are scientists, it is impossible to personally test all of the things generally accepted as true. I have seen no direct evidence of GR, for example. I don't deny that experiments tend to support GR, but in spite of testing as much of science as I can, I have no opportunity to "question and challenge and dispute," as you want of religion.
It is true that when religions are in control of the state, the government has tended to suppress opposition. But that has also been true when religions are not in control of the state. Whether religious or atheist, people always have human failings. So I will keep my own religion, thank you very much.
In order to ask "why are we here?", we must be in a universe where the random chances did come out right -- or else we wouldn't be here. Not so amazing, really, 'cause look, here we are.
I'm not real thrilled with these arguments that play fast-and-loose with cosmology. If we're allowed to pick from various universes with different physical law, shouldn't we expect to be in one where (intelligent) life is more probable?
Even better, I can take existing physics and apply it to a "steady state" universe (one of infinite extent, no big bang/heat death/crunch) with just as much consistency as our current universe. But in the steady state case, life occurs infinitely more often (in terms of conciousnesses) than in the big bang scenario. So shouldn't we expect to be in a steady state universe with probability 1?
What I'm trying to show you is that in order to call upon multiple universes, you must provide a meta-structure, which begs to question of why the meta-structure has the form it does. There is simply no way that science can explain why the universe is the way it is, since to do that it would have to show that all other ways are impossible.
That said, I must admit I'm convinced that life arose through evolution. But I don't think you can expect to pin down the processes through which it arose (whether natural or not) because Nature has got so many years and so much more processing power than you. If you're going to say that we had so-and-so many years to develop life, and probability is such-and-such per year... Well, I'll believe your so-and-so's, but your such-and-such's are going to turn out to be far too small!
This is like the rainbow... It is easy enough to explain in theoretical terms, just using Snell's law, but if you had never seen one, I doubt that you, or anyone else, would guess that a rainbow could ever happen! So if you could run a sensitive experiment to simulate the conditions of the early Earth and create RNA or whatever, then you might get a reasonable value for the such-and-such. But a theoretical calculation is not going to cut it, since the planet is so much cleverer at developing life than you are.
(And, just to beat the dead horse once more, no amount of science can explain the origin of physical law.)
(The movie, on the other hand, is a grievous insult to any sentient being.)
Sorry! I didn't mean that as a serious criticism. I'm just not very good at the throwaway, non sequitur style of humor. I do find the movie rather heavy-handed, but that is a matter of personal taste. Its parody of recent culture (in particular, I am thinking of ID4 , and CNN's coverage of Desert Storm) is quite on the mark.
Starship Troopers is one of my favorite books. This is not to say that I think it depicts the ideal society. The book is not a manifesto, propaganda, or a poorly executed satire (as some well-meaning fans think). It's more like The Republic -- it's supposed to make you think, not tell you what is right. The questions it raises are valuable in themselves.
As for my opinion on the most controversial bit: in the context of the U.S., I don't think the vote should be limited more than it already is. (Young people and some felons cannot vote) But this is mainly because voting restrictions would quickly turn into a political tool, like the tax code, or redistricting. It is a shame that most people don't care to vote, and it is tragic that those who do tend to vote selfishly. Although people are basically good, in any large democracy there seems to be a problem with a lack of civic-mindedness.
In any case, I highly recommend the book to any child or adult old enough to reason for themselves. The opinions in it are strong, but unlike TV commericals, it does not try to brainwash you. (The movie, on the other hand, is a grievous insult to any sentient being.)
When you don't need the key anymore, place the DVDs onto a hard surface and use 1 hammer to mix. Cook in a 1000 watt microwave for one minute. (1:30 for low wattage ovens)
This will stop most spooks. Now, the NSA might have uncooking technology, but of course they're on our side.
Well, I don't see any reason to call technology tragic, but Disney (the man) sure is.
Think of it... The man spends his life building a truly creative, magical company -- but when he dies, the company morphs into a media marketing conglomerate, smothering its own tiny creative division to keep it from competing with its own past output.
I didn't realize the extent of its hatred of creative competition until the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension came up. Disney pushed it... hard. The main reason is presumably to keep the image of the Mouse from entering public domain. The side effect is to keep *anything* from entering the public domain for at least 20 years. The cruel irony is so many of their works (Pinocchio, Little Mermaid, Hunchback, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, etc...) came directly from stories which had been copyrighted, but become free for public use. Well, no more.
And of course Disney's crowning failure came at the very end of his life. The attendant physicians misunderstood his last request, and (alas) instead of preserving his magnificant brain, we now have "Disney on Ice!"
Giant slugs are a possibility, but they will still need to live on the run while teenagers. I think a leaner, meaner slug would be a better adaptation. An area could support many more slugs of small size, making Slugbot work harder for less food. Also, the natural bias in the slug detection routine will strongly favor finding large slugs. It may be worthwhile to bias slugbot to go after smaller slugs first, to avoid pushing selection in a direction helpful to the slugs. This may avoid the problems encountered by the farmers who used larger potatoes for food and smaller ones for seed.
(assuming that noone for a while will be able to feed on the SlubBots)
Interesting idea... The robot is probably not tasty, but perhaps creatures that don't mind eating dead slugs will learn to raid the slugbot hopper? Could be dangerous if they hide in the hopper and don't escape before the return to base, though.
Anyway, the slugs have the most to gain through adaptation here. If the thing is efficient, perhaps slugs in the area will learn to "hide" from it by standing in an unusual posture, or near a bright light or something. Or, since the thing uses a red filter to help identification, gaining any kind of red pigmentation would be very useful.
Any adaptation that successfully defeats the machine for a year would be highly advantageous, since the gardens would be filled with nice, juicy wheat, and no competition from other slugs.
It doesn't matter how they spend. Most of their scientists have left. Furthermore, the more competent the scientist, the more eager to find a position in Europe, Japan, or US. In such conditions, only a small stockpile can be kept reliable.
Also, although I am not military expert, in light of their recent endeavor in Chechnya, one must wonder if their priorities have not turned to the more immediate and the close-at-hand.
Also furthermore, why is it that Juliani can say that he doesn't want tax dollars going to fund obscene art, but I can't say that I don't want my tax dollars used to support (in the form of tax dedectible contributions) religious proselyzation?
Sorry, U.S. government is not a buffet dinner. As a rule, you do not pick and choose which laws apply to you. There are very few exceptions. This is expressed in the motto "United we stand, divided we fall." However, you are free to move to another community or renounce your citizenship.
As to why Giuliani can make executive decisions: he was granted these powers in the last election. If you really are a NYC resident, then try to keep him from being reelected. A legislative kludge could also work, but should be avoided if possible, as it tends to break the abstraction.
There is a good explanation from Prof. Jaffe at MIT. (Scroll down a few pages to get to the relevant part of the transcript. The realvideo at the top picks up around at the interesting bit, and has more info.)
Slashdot Mirror
"Idea" and "meme" have the same meaning but different connotations. "Meme" is generally used to de-emphasize the importance of thinking and rationality. The hair style and pants/skirt length of teenagers are the classic examples of memes -- they are apparently random parameters of fashion whose spread can be easily seen. (Much to the dismay of the parents!)
I personally distrust this "m" word because it is so often used for anti-intellectual purposes. So for example, fashionable cultural studies types like to talk about memes because they don't believe in objective truth. In the extreme case, some of them argue that Newton's Laws are just an oppressive meme and ought to be replaced with something more liberating. Fortunately, most of them are (a little) more sensible than that.
The scientific weakness of this study of memes is that there is no rule for why they do or do not spread. Genes and natural selection are two great tastes that go well together, since creatures with bad genes die. But if a person has a really dumb idea and gets killed, (e.g., lies down in the middle of a two-way street) then whether it is imitated or not depends on whether they get on the evening news. And although we have made wonderful progress in the sciences in the last hundred years, the evening news is still beyond explanation.
In this article, you can see that the author has used the connotation of memes to imply that the opposition relies on a sort of brainwashing rather than a fair exchange of ideas. His intentions are good, but I think he should've left the memes out of it. The whole meme thing is why he says that "the battle over filters ... is just one of implanting the right ideas in enough people's minds." Or for example, his phrase "Memetic Warfare," doesn't pack as much punch translated into "War of Ideas." I guess the most accurate title he could have chosen is "Ideological Warfare." Anyway, you sure don't need to invoke memes to state his very legitimate complaint: the opposition is deliberately lying about the effectiveness of their so-called solution.
Anyway, if you actually want to read about the transmission of ideas, don't read The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, since it's
Instead, read Bellwether by Connie Willis. It's a lot more fun, intelligent, and only costs half as much! And at least she can distinguish between ideas and fads.
The real difference between atheists and theists is that atheists know how to apply Occam's Razor.
If this were really that simple, then it would seem Occam wasn't very good at using his own razor, since he was a Franciscan monk and theologian! If you think it ought to be so obvious, why didn't he notice or something?
Nuclear weapons are a big hoax - but not necessarily a malicious one. If two allied nations with different philosophical views are eyeing each other nervously over the body of a defeated enemy, and the populace of both nations are calmouring for war, then what do you do?
You tell them that NUKES will rain out of the sky if either side attacks, and several horrible things will happen to them. This worked wonderfully until the Soviet government collapsed, and peace and joy spread throughout the world. With the fall of the Evil Empire, surely the people would see that there was no more need for a standing army, no need bully others, and there would be no need for the nukes to exist.
Belief in the nukes was also a way of controlling the masses so they wouldn't burn too many bras or ROTC buildings (2 of the most popular combustibles) or overthrow the current government and cause anarchy. I thank nukes for helping the US get past those first few years of postwar civilization without destroying itself, but enough is enough.
Now the people know enough not to start another world war, and governments can do more harm than good, nukes have become obsolete like my 486 that hasn't worked in years. It scares the hell out of me to see so many people blindly following a "charismatic leader" who pretends to have the nukes on his side, instead of thinking for themselves. I don't know of any President or Prime Minister that doesn't skim some pork off the top of the barrels (and some humidor contents I might add) and the presence of multiple nations pretending to have developed these so-called nukes, or stealing nonexistent `warhead technologies' has just turned the whole thing into a big war of denial. Nukes, please stop messing with us so that science can make the world a better place.
</PARODY>"If the bible and christianity (or similar for any religion) can continually question and challenge and dispute its own doctorines and continue to survive and maintain logical cohesion, I'll believe that the religion has merit. But if everything is True by Decree and questions are met with hostility or silence, then this I believe speaks volumes about the convictions of the religious followers own belief in his system."
You portray scientific research on the whole as a pristine and selfless quest for truth. You say that "science accepts its own debunking of some of its former doctorines and what remains gains strength." You are correct that scientists can be at least as egomaniacal as the rest of us. But you don't seem to understand that they can be, and have been, at least as suppressive as any mainstream American religion. In particular, you seem to think that scientists are open to rational debate, when in religion "everything is True by Decree and questions are met with hostility or silence." But within the scientific community, scientists have been as eager to silence opposition as anyone else.
Do you know of the feud between English and Continental mathematics? A ridiculous dispute about who invented the calculus set back mathematics by decades. The English schools stubbornly taught the antiquated system of fluxions because it had been invented by Newton, while the other Europeans used differentials.
In the nineteenth century: Kronecker did everything he could to humiliate Cantor, and did succeed in destroying his career. (Cantor was the *inventor* of topology.) Cantor never saw his opinions accepted by the community. Plenty of slashdot posters can tell you how the brilliant scientist Tesla was cheated, both during his life and after his death. He has never really been vindicated. Oppenheimer was isolated from the community in the 50's for his stance against nuclear weapons. Teller is largely isolated from the community *today* for his support of arms buildup. And although you can ceratinly argue that cold fusion was correctly debunked, the reaction to *legitimate* research in the anomalous heating associated with Pons and Fleischmans' apparatus was, and is, shameful.
Furthermore, science does not free you from the need for faith. I believe in the results of quantum mechanics and special relativity partly because I have tested some of them myself in classes. However, most people cannot say as much. To them the laws of physics may as well have been brought down from on high. The average person does not participate in your scientific quest for truth. Even for those people who are scientists, it is impossible to personally test all of the things generally accepted as true. I have seen no direct evidence of GR, for example. I don't deny that experiments tend to support GR, but in spite of testing as much of science as I can, I have no opportunity to "question and challenge and dispute," as you want of religion.
It is true that when religions are in control of the state, the government has tended to suppress opposition. But that has also been true when religions are not in control of the state. Whether religious or atheist, people always have human failings. So I will keep my own religion, thank you very much.
In order to ask "why are we here?", we must be in a universe where the random chances did come out right -- or else we wouldn't be here. Not so amazing, really, 'cause look, here we are.
I'm not real thrilled with these arguments that play fast-and-loose with cosmology. If we're allowed to pick from various universes with different physical law, shouldn't we expect to be in one where (intelligent) life is more probable?
Even better, I can take existing physics and apply it to a "steady state" universe (one of infinite extent, no big bang/heat death/crunch) with just as much consistency as our current universe. But in the steady state case, life occurs infinitely more often (in terms of conciousnesses) than in the big bang scenario. So shouldn't we expect to be in a steady state universe with probability 1?
What I'm trying to show you is that in order to call upon multiple universes, you must provide a meta-structure, which begs to question of why the meta-structure has the form it does. There is simply no way that science can explain why the universe is the way it is, since to do that it would have to show that all other ways are impossible.
That said, I must admit I'm convinced that life arose through evolution. But I don't think you can expect to pin down the processes through which it arose (whether natural or not) because Nature has got so many years and so much more processing power than you. If you're going to say that we had so-and-so many years to develop life, and probability is such-and-such per year... Well, I'll believe your so-and-so's, but your such-and-such's are going to turn out to be far too small!
This is like the rainbow... It is easy enough to explain in theoretical terms, just using Snell's law, but if you had never seen one, I doubt that you, or anyone else, would guess that a rainbow could ever happen! So if you could run a sensitive experiment to simulate the conditions of the early Earth and create RNA or whatever, then you might get a reasonable value for the such-and-such. But a theoretical calculation is not going to cut it, since the planet is so much cleverer at developing life than you are.
(And, just to beat the dead horse once more, no amount of science can explain the origin of physical law.)
Sorry! I didn't mean that as a serious criticism. I'm just not very good at the throwaway, non sequitur style of humor. I do find the movie rather heavy-handed, but that is a matter of personal taste. Its parody of recent culture (in particular, I am thinking of ID4 , and CNN's coverage of Desert Storm) is quite on the mark.
Starship Troopers is one of my favorite books. This is not to say that I think it depicts the ideal society. The book is not a manifesto, propaganda, or a poorly executed satire (as some well-meaning fans think). It's more like The Republic -- it's supposed to make you think, not tell you what is right. The questions it raises are valuable in themselves.
As for my opinion on the most controversial bit: in the context of the U.S., I don't think the vote should be limited more than it already is. (Young people and some felons cannot vote) But this is mainly because voting restrictions would quickly turn into a political tool, like the tax code, or redistricting. It is a shame that most people don't care to vote, and it is tragic that those who do tend to vote selfishly. Although people are basically good, in any large democracy there seems to be a problem with a lack of civic-mindedness.
In any case, I highly recommend the book to any child or adult old enough to reason for themselves. The opinions in it are strong, but unlike TV commericals, it does not try to brainwash you. (The movie, on the other hand, is a grievous insult to any sentient being.)
When you don't need the key anymore, place the DVDs onto a hard surface and use 1 hammer to mix. Cook in a 1000 watt microwave for one minute. (1:30 for low wattage ovens)
This will stop most spooks. Now, the NSA might have uncooking technology, but of course they're on our side.
Well, I don't see any reason to call technology tragic, but Disney (the man) sure is.
Think of it... The man spends his life building a truly creative, magical company -- but when he dies, the company morphs into a media marketing conglomerate, smothering its own tiny creative division to keep it from competing with its own past output.
I didn't realize the extent of its hatred of creative competition until the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension came up. Disney pushed it... hard. The main reason is presumably to keep the image of the Mouse from entering public domain. The side effect is to keep *anything* from entering the public domain for at least 20 years. The cruel irony is so many of their works (Pinocchio, Little Mermaid, Hunchback, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, etc...) came directly from stories which had been copyrighted, but become free for public use. Well, no more.
And of course Disney's crowning failure came at the very end of his life. The attendant physicians misunderstood his last request, and (alas) instead of preserving his magnificant brain, we now have "Disney on Ice!"
(sorry, couldn't help it!)
Giant slugs are a possibility, but they will still need to live on the run while teenagers. I think a leaner, meaner slug would be a better adaptation. An area could support many more slugs of small size, making Slugbot work harder for less food. Also, the natural bias in the slug detection routine will strongly favor finding large slugs. It may be worthwhile to bias slugbot to go after smaller slugs first, to avoid pushing selection in a direction helpful to the slugs. This may avoid the problems encountered by the farmers who used larger potatoes for food and smaller ones for seed.
(assuming that noone for a while will be able to feed on the SlubBots)
Interesting idea... The robot is probably not tasty, but perhaps creatures that don't mind eating dead slugs will learn to raid the slugbot hopper? Could be dangerous if they hide in the hopper and don't escape before the return to base, though.
Anyway, the slugs have the most to gain through adaptation here. If the thing is efficient, perhaps slugs in the area will learn to "hide" from it by standing in an unusual posture, or near a bright light or something. Or, since the thing uses a red filter to help identification, gaining any kind of red pigmentation would be very useful.
Any adaptation that successfully defeats the machine for a year would be highly advantageous, since the gardens would be filled with nice, juicy wheat, and no competition from other slugs.
At times like this, I'm glad I don't have any money to lose.
It doesn't matter how they spend. Most of their scientists have left. Furthermore, the more competent the scientist, the more eager to find a position in Europe, Japan, or US. In such conditions, only a small stockpile can be kept reliable.
Also, although I am not military expert, in light of their recent endeavor in Chechnya, one must wonder if their priorities have not turned to the more immediate and the close-at-hand.
Also furthermore, why is it that Juliani can say that he doesn't want tax dollars going to fund obscene art, but I can't say that I don't want my tax dollars used to support (in the form of tax dedectible contributions) religious proselyzation?
Sorry, U.S. government is not a buffet dinner. As a rule, you do not pick and choose which laws apply to you. There are very few exceptions. This is expressed in the motto "United we stand, divided we fall." However, you are free to move to another community or renounce your citizenship.
As to why Giuliani can make executive decisions: he was granted these powers in the last election. If you really are a NYC resident, then try to keep him from being reelected. A legislative kludge could also work, but should be avoided if possible, as it tends to break the abstraction.
Yeah...
and Dr. Strangelove is about how nuclear proliferation is not so bad after all.
There is a good explanation from Prof. Jaffe at MIT. (Scroll down a few pages to get to the relevant part of the transcript. The realvideo at the top picks up around at the interesting bit, and has more info.)