> Well the first one that comes to mind was you seemed to do all sorts of mental gymnastics in response to my "man reading about global warming in Huffington Post" metaphor.
What you wrote:
As for this pedantic discussion, maybe this parable will help. A man goes to Huffington Post and reads an article about the dangers of global warming. Fully convinced, he goes shouting from the rooftops: "Huffington Post has the potential to be one of the most important publications in all of history! It is urgently important that we stop global warming!"
My reply:
Your analogy seems flawed to me. The Huffington Post is a fairly trashy rag that prints vague, half-informed articles on a wide variety of subjects, mostly in a click-baity form. Memetics is a label assigned to an abstract concept.
Could widespread public understanding and acceptance of what the Huffington Post writes change the world? Not in any plausible way I can see. Could widespread public understanding and acceptance (or at least open-minded consideration) of the concepts (delusional beliefs, reality vs perception, epistemology, etc) that fall under the Memetics label change the world? I think....maybe. If, that is, some way could be found to accomplish the "understanding and acceptance (or at least open-minded consideration)" part.
Is "all sorts of mental gymnastics" a fair characterization of that?
> I had thought that the meaning of that should be pretty blatantly clear and that the particular choices like "huffington post" or "global warming" should be pretty obviously irrelevant.
It's not really an argument, it's more of a "guilt by association" slur. Very effective rhetoric no doubt, but not intellectually convincing.
> Probably my own fault for assuming the meaning was clearer than it was.
I'm perfectly comfortable with my existing rebuttal, tear into it if you'd like.
> For comparison you could imagine if I responded to your "rose by any other name" by saying something like, "What are you talking about, don't you know that a 'rose' is a type of flower? Our conversation has nothing to do with flowers!"
Except the meaning of that phrase is very widely known, and we have already established that we both know what it means. Your HuffPost/GlobalWarming story though is neither of these.
> Let's talk practical matters. If you want to seriously survey what mankind collectively has figured out about "mechanisms, propagation, etc"
It seems we are still, somehow, still not on the same page.
Recall this exchange:
>> (Me) "If global polarization of opinions on a wide variety of topics (some of which can be argued to be an existential threat to human existence on earth) starts to suddenly increase, and it is learned that opinions on both sides of most disagreements are based on objectively incorrect beliefs, it would be extremely valuable (possibly up to restoring the previous likelihood of long-term sustainability of human life on the planet) to find a way to get people to fully realize their beliefs are false, so that reasonable, collaborative negotiations can be established to begin solving our various problems."
> (You) I'm in full agreement with the quoted paragraph. And I would say reducing the amount of delusional beliefs held by individuals is extremely, urgently important.
We have more than enough of a handle on the mechanisms, etc. The fact is, on complicated topics, hardly anyone knows what the fuck they are talking about, but plenty of people think they do, and this is starting to cause dangerous levels of strongly polarized beliefs in Western nations. But despite all of this being blatantly obvious, no one in a major position of leadership or influence is pointing this fact (that everyone is misinformed) out to anyone. Instead, everyone continues to pander to their tribe, saying it is only the other side who is delusional. This is what I propose needs to stop.
EDIT: Thinking about it more, I think I'm leaving out the importance of epistemology being a core part of this message, which is perhaps distinct from memetics?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology