Of course it is. Pointing out that something is a meme isn't really an insult, it's just the nature of reality.
Indeed, chanting of team slogans, etc are all forms of memetic, cult-like behavior.
> Name something memetics has impacted. Viral marketing? Nope, that would've happened with or without Dawkins. Etc.
Memetics isn't an "invention", it's simply a label given to a general observation (itself a meme) of ideas like people do not think in facts, or fully realize the difference between reality and their interpretation of reality. Whether the discovery and documentation of these human behaviors has "impacted" anything is no proof one way or another if it is a correct theory.
I happen to believe it could impact the world in a major way, if large numbers or people were intimately aware of it, but that's far easier said than done. Accepting these ideas in principle isn't terribly difficult (although plenty of people seem to find the ideas offensive), but even having intellectually accepted the principle, changing one's real-time behavior (not jumping to conclusions or mischaracterizing/imagining the beliefs of others during conversations, humbly admitting when someone points out your facts aren't actually facts, etc etc etc) is something else entirely. This can be observed on HN, Reddit, and everywhere on a daily basis.
People have been pointing that out for a loooong time. Plato's famous allegory of the cave. Or St. Paul in his letter to the church of Corinth, "Now we see but a dim reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known".
>Indeed, chanting of team slogans[, reciting famous quotes, and using mnemonic devices] are all forms of memetic, cult-like behavior
Next elementary school science teacher I run into, I'll have to enlighten her that "ROY G. BIV" is cult-like behavior and she's been brainwashing her students all this time ;)
Here's a second chance: above you say: "The grandparent comment about Memetics being so "impactful" is somewhat like English professors taking credit for the fact that we're speaking English."
Perhaps you're right and they aren't impactful. Could you share how you know how impactful (or not) memetics are, say in the field of democracy. The comment you were replying to above states: "I realized I was getting more emotionally from the memes (which aren’t exactly the sort of memes Dawkins was thinking of) than long-winded analysis of what was good/bad about the episode." That comment touches on something that seems rather interesting and counter-intuitive to me - do you disagree? If that person "gets more" from GOT memes than long-winded analysis, might Donald Trump supporters perhaps have their beliefs shaped by the various memes they consume? After all, I suspect you'd be quite agreeable on the idea that Trump supporters are a rather delusional bunch, would you not?
Was the election of Donald Trump an impactful event? Did memes have precisely zero impact on the election of Donald Trump (here's one I grabbed at random from today's front page of /r/T_D: https://i.imgur.com/fwvnNfN.jpg Here's another: https://imgur.com/a/TQJvDXr)? (And if it isn't too much trouble, when answering, please explain how it is you know the answer to that question. As a hint, I will draw attention to my previous statement: "...changing one's real-time behavior...". As another hint, as a mental exercise consider how your statement "Yes, image macros can be a great way of getting a point across." can be true, while it is simultaneously true that image macros have no impact.)
Ah ok, I'm glad I was misunderstanding rather than disagreeing.
> As for Memetics having an impact, well, that would be like a professor of theoretical musicology releasing a #1 charting pop album.
Here I'm quite certain we actually do disagree.
If we take the definition as: "Memetics is the study of information and culture based on an analogy with Darwinian evolution. Proponents describe memetics as an approach to evolutionary models of cultural information transfer. Memetics describes how an idea can propagate successfully, but doesn't necessarily imply a concept is factual."
Would it be fair to say this is consistent with the notion that people don't think in facts, they think in ideas (aka memes), which aren't necessarily true? Do you significantly disagree with this notion?
That's on the academic side. On the practical side, sure, marketing firms and political campaigns have attempted to hijack image captions, with varying (usually low) success. (It's not like Trump employs a bunch of scientists to post image captions on r/T_D. Love it or hate it, that's grass roots.) All of this would have been done whether people had decided to latch it to Memetics or not. It's not like image macros wouldn't have become a thing if "Selfish Gene" hadn't been written.
I am, or the author of the wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics) where I quoted that definition from?
> Long before Dawkins, we had things like "archetypes" in Jungian psychology, "gestalts" in gestalt psychology, "signs" in semiotics.
>> Archetypes were a concept introduced by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, who believed that archetypes were models of people, behaviors, or personalities. Archetypes, he suggested, were inborn tendencies that play a role in influencing human behavior.
>> Gestalt psychology is an attempt to understand the laws behind the ability to acquire and maintain meaningful perceptions in an apparently chaotic world. The central principle of gestalt psychology is that the mind forms a global whole with self-organizing tendencies through the law of prägnanz. This principle maintains that when the human mind (perceptual system) forms a percept or "gestalt", the whole has a reality of its own, independent of the parts.
>> In semiotics, a sign is anything that communicates a meaning that is not the sign itself to the interpreter of the sign. The meaning can be intentional such as a word uttered with a specific meaning, or unintentional, such as a symptom being a sign of a particular medical condition. Signs can communicate through any of the senses, visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or taste.
Regardless, refer to this phenomenon using whatever words you'd like. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
> They've had about as much genuine scholarly impact as Deepak Chopra!
I don't disagree with your assertion that ~"multiple people have recognized and described this phenomenon within human psychology and assigned it a variety of labels", or that there has so far been little noteworthy impact. My interest is about the potential of this knowledge.
I initially wrote:
"I believe memetics is one of the most impactful but underappreciated ideas out there today, and plausibly explains the bizarre polarization of opinions on a wide variety of hot button current topics. Everyone perceives that their opinion/knowledge is based on facts, but very few are even slightly aware that their knowledge is actually based on a hodge podge of memes, each with varying levels of truthiness."
If I had more accurately described my beliefs like so:
"I believe memetics is one of the most important but underappreciated ideas out there today, and plausibly explains the bizarre polarization of opinions on a wide variety of hot button current topics. Everyone perceives that their opinion/knowledge is based on facts, but very few are even slightly aware that their knowledge is actually based on a hodge podge of memes, each with varying levels of truthiness. If we could somehow manage to get a significant portion of the population to truly realize that much of what they believe, what they consider to be fact, their mental model of reality, is largely made up of meaningfully incorrect approximations, the impact on the world could be substantial."
....would you still disagree?
If so, could you note which specific parts of my words you disagree with?
Everyone perceives that their opinion/knowledge is based on facts, but very few are even slightly aware that their knowledge is actually based on a hodge podge of memes, each with varying levels of truthiness. If we could somehow manage to get a significant portion of the population to truly realize that much of what they believe, what they consider to be fact, their mental model of reality, is largely made up of meaningfully incorrect approximations, the impact on the world could be substantial.
I wonder if I can make my meaning even clearer (more difficult to find a way to misunderstand)....how about if I phrase it this way:
"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."
In the spirit of conversational efficiency, perhaps it is helpful to note explicitly that my intent is to learn your opinion on how important/valuable you personally believe reducing the amount of delusional beliefs held by individuals in society might be, and that I am happy to continue redirecting the conversation back to that specific topic as many times as is necessary.
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!"
You see, that first sentence which the man shouted is distracting and confused. He should have just jumped straight to the second one. Just to be clear, in this parable, the man represents you, "global warming" represents "everyone is operating under delusional beliefs", and "Huffington Post" represents Memetics.
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. Unfortunately, this seems much less likely, as conversations like this well demonstrate, imho. It's kind of a self-referential problem if you think about it, which is why it's so difficult I guess.
> As for this pedantic discussion
Oh there's no doubt it's pedantic, but pedantry is sometimes useful in non-cooperative/evasive conversations. But even more importantly, I find it personally useful to take these conversations as far as possible before my "adversary's" sense of amusement runs out. I think it is useful (or at least interesting) to learn more about the nature/behaviors of intelligent people who do not have conflicting values or goals with me, or even conflicting abstract beliefs ("I would say reducing the amount of delusional beliefs held by individuals is extremely, urgently important"), yet who seem determined to seek ways to fail. If you and I, who seem to be in full agreement (discovered only through pedantic dedication to keeping this conversation on topic) on what is important, can't seem to reach a point of mutually respectful and reasonable conversation, whom may I ask do you think is going to fix this problem in democratic societies? The media? The politicians?
On even semi-complicated topics, people don't really know what the fuck they're talking about at least half the time. At best they're "kinda" right. You might expect this from the general public, but when it starts infecting the culture of sites like HN, that seems like a very bad sign to me.
Wikipedia describes Memetics as "the study of information and culture based on an analogy with Darwinian evolution". A body of study is not an abstract concept. The thing being studied is the abstract concept. So, by Memetics, all along, I have meant the collective body of (academic) study/scholarship of memes. Since you say "Memetics is a label assigned to an abstract concept", it seems that's the root of the understanding. You're talking about the concept itself, while I'm talking about the study/literature of that concept.
My objective with my original comment was to counter your claim that Memetics was high impact. I consider the objective moot now, since it's become apparent you're using "Memetics" in a nonstandard sense, and the rest of the audience is long gone.
Memetics (the study of memes) is a useful path which has apparently led you to enlightenment and made you realize we're all laboring under illusions. It's not the only path, and now that you've reached enlightenment, you should realize that Memetics itself is just one more of those illusions you're opposed to. (In the same way, Buddhists say, "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.")
Trying to rid yourself of ignorance by your own willpower is futile. There is no solid ground to stand on, because everything is ignorance. "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." Dawkins and his type are priests of a religion based on trying to rid oneself of ignorance by one's own willpower. This will never work, and you'll always be miserable. Jesus said: "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." You will never come to the ultimate truth via your own intellectual exercises. It's as futile as trying to write a dictionary with no circular definitions.
As I stated: "I think it is useful (or at least interesting) to learn more about the nature/behaviors of intelligent people who do not have conflicting values or goals with me, or even conflicting abstract beliefs ("I would say reducing the amount of delusional beliefs held by individuals is extremely, urgently important"), yet who seem determined to seek ways to fail."
Perhaps "find ways to misunderstand the question being asked or shift the subject" would have been more appropriate than "fail".
(When reading this, please keep in mind I fully acknowledge your above words regarding the validity of the term "abstract beliefs" in this sentence. I hope you can overlook this and accept that I am simply restating this prior statement exactly as initially written, with full admission that it may fall short of absolutely perfect accuracy in choice of terms.
See also:
https://lifehacker.com/utilize-the-steel-man-tactic-to-argue...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity
Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19901735 "I'm curious why you think a transition to a more enlightened..."
)
> Are you hoping to convince me to take a specific action or something?
Yes, answer the questions as written, or acknowledge that you choose not to (rather than leading the conversation off onto a tangent).
> Wikipedia describes Memetics as "the study of information and culture based on an analogy with Darwinian evolution". A body of study is not an abstract concept.
Speaking of pedantry....do you think the core idea or intent of this discussion from my perspective is the precise definition of the word "memetics"? Are you familiar with the meaning of the phrase "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet"?"
I have clearly said multiple times that my interest is related to the potential utility of a widespread, true understanding of the ideas discussed within memetics - whether it could make a difference in the world.
> My objective with my original comment was to counter your claim that Memetics was high impact.
And I have clearly addressed the poor choice of words in my initial statement, at least twice:
- "I don't disagree with your assertion that ~"multiple people have recognized and described this phenomenon within human psychology and assigned it a variety of labels", or that there has so far been little noteworthy impact. My interest is about the potential of this knowledge."
- "Hmmmm....on one hand this seems like all a silly misunderstanding, basically a pedantic difference of "impactful" vs "potentially impactful"."
The conversation clearly moved on beyond that: "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"
....and yet, you have once again pivoted back to whether Memetics is high impact, after already acknowledging you believe the ideas contained within are "extremely, urgently important".
> I consider the objective moot now, since it's become apparent you're using "Memetics" in a nonstandard sense, and the rest of the audience is long gone.
I'm not here to win points, I'm here to have a conversation and gain a deeper understanding of human nature (in this case, why people behave evasively in conversations).
> Trying to rid yourself of ignorance by your own willpower is futile. There is no solid ground to stand on, because everything is ignorance. "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." Dawkins and his type are priests of a religion based on trying to rid oneself of ignorance by one's own willpower. This will never work, and you'll always be miserable. Jesus said: "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." You will never come to the ultimate truth via your own intellectual exercises. It's as futile as trying to write a dictionary with no circular definitions.
This all sounds a bit like those vague but persuasive/useful memes we were talking about earlier. A tangential one at that! ;)
Since you want to learn from me, one of my guiding principles is: there's far too much great material to read in a lifetime, so use the test of time to filter it. I'm currently reading the collected works of Shakespeare and finding it far more amazing than I expected. "A rose by any other name" is just one of many passages about names, self-denial, and so forth in Romeo and Juliet; to the point I'm convinced R&J is only a love story on the very surface, and has a far profounder hidden meaning. Shakespeare has passed the test of time. Dawkins hasn't, so I depriotize him. Maybe Dawkins is better than Shakespeare, but I consider that improbable because Dawkins hasn't passed the test of time yet. And if he were so great, he'd have Beatles-level fanfare. I'll read Dawkins when/if an editor asks me to peer-review one of Dawkins's papers or a paper that majorly cites him.
>Do you think the core idea or intent of this discussion from my perspective is the precise definition of the word "memetics"?
That was related to MY core intent (see my prev. comment).
>Yes, answer the questions as written, or acknowledge that you choose not to
Heretofore, I've been attempting to synthesize your comments and reply to them on-the-whole rather than bullet by bullet.
>after already acknowledging you believe the ideas contained within are "extremely, urgently important"
Again, this is like a man saying 'The ideas in Huffington Post are extremely, urgently important', because he read an article there about global warming. The "ideas contained within" are not unique to Memetics, Memetics just happens to be where you first encountered them. They've been around for thousands of years! (And as an aside, as an academic discipline, "Memetics" is just as trashy and low-brow as Huffington Post.)
>This all sounds a bit like those vague but persuasive/useful memes we were talking about earlier. A tangential one at that!
If you think people are laboring under illusions now, think how bad it was in the year 30 AD. Caesar was literally declaring himself a god, and enforcing it with state propaganda. THAT'S the kind of environment in which Jesus of Nazareth was spreading truth-bombs. And if Jesus hadn't done what he'd done, we'd still be enslaved by god-kings today.
I would appreciate if you could point out some specific examples of where you believe I've done this, as a secondary motive for engaging in these seemingly useless conversations is that I'm trying to learn how to achieve constructive conversation under a variety of circumstances. I've done my best to argue mostly in good faith, but spotting one's shortcomings (blind spots) is incredibly difficult (as you correctly point out).
> because I've been praying recently for the Lord to help me better love my neighbors, and those links you posted are highly relevant! Jesus said: "Do not throw your pearls before swine. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces." Maybe what he meant was, don't condescendingly think of people as swine, but rather, assume the best in them.
It's a good question. Some possible explanations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_7:6#Interpretations The first few seem off the mark, but the latter ones seem reasonable.
> Dawkins hasn't, so I depriotize him. Maybe Dawkins is better than Shakespeare, but I consider that improbable because Dawkins hasn't passed the test of time yet. And if he were so great, he'd have Beatles-level fanfare. I'll read Dawkins when/if an editor asks me to peer-review one of Dawkins's papers or a paper that majorly cites him.
I happen to not be a big fan of Dawkins, but might you have fallen victim to a bit of guilt by association here? Again, the importance here is not the identification, summation, and labeling of these behaviors, it is the behaviors themselves. The quality of discourse in Western nations has been disgraceful and declining for a very long time now, but something seems to have changed recently to dramatically accelerate the decline. This is what I'm interested in. We have an overabundance of base materials and theory/philosophy to work from, but I propose that what's happening now is different. There is no shortage of online experts (armchair and otherwise) telling us "why" this is, but very few people I'm aware of who are closely studying it with a minimum of biases and preconceived notions, and doing so with their eyes wide open.
>> Wikipedia describes Memetics as "the study of information and culture based on an analogy with Darwinian evolution". A body of study is not an abstract concept. The thing being studied is the abstract concept. So, by Memetics, all along, I have meant the collective body of (academic) study/scholarship of memes. Since you say "Memetics is a label assigned to an abstract concept", it seems that's the root of the understanding. You're talking about the concept itself, while I'm talking about the study/literature of that concept.
>> Do you think the core idea or intent of this discussion from my perspective is the precise definition of the word "memetics"?
> That was related to MY core intent (see my prev. comment).
Ok, let's try this again then, perhaps I'm understanding your perspective better now....might you be referring to the study of memetics, limited only to the mechanisms, propogation, etc, whereas I am extending that (perhaps incorrectly) to include the "second order effects" on individuals in society, and how "memes" (spread near-instantaneously via the internet) has facilitated a massive increase in incorrect opinions (on both "sides" of the various divides) on a much broader range of topics (absent the internet, most people would have zero exposure to many of the contentious issues)?
Hopefully this is getting closer, but if not this is a good lesson in how difficult it is to understand what the other person is talking about even when both parties are trying as hard as possible!
I happen to be quite pleased at how this conversation seems to now be turning out. On one hand, it's very easy to view this conversation from a(!) perspective where it is clearly an utter waste of both of our time. On the other hand, I believe there is also a more abstract perspective you can view it from where it demonstrates that sometimes, patience and politeness can overcome a seemingly intractable impasse.
Once again, as I'm sure you well know, we've all been taught these lessons before ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsJnxlXepsY ), but we never seem to get it through our thick skulls.
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. 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. Probably my own fault for assuming the meaning was clearer than it was. 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!"
> Ok, let's try this again then...
Let's talk practical matters. If you want to seriously survey what mankind collectively has figured out about "mechanisms, propagation, etc", "a massive increase in incorrect opinions", etc., how might you embark on that journey? What search terms do you plug in to Google Scholar? You could try meme-related search terms like "memes and ignorance" or "deceptive memes" etc., and (with the help of scihub) you might find some interesting material. But my point is that you ought to widen the net with searches related to "propaganda", "false beliefs", "misinformation", etc. For example, the latter leads to this article which might be of interest to you (I only skimmed the abstract so I'm not offering any guarantees), which does not contain the word "meme" anywhere in it: https://www.pnas.org/content/113/3/554
My sentiments here are similar to those of Oliver Braddick in the following editorial, but replace "illusion" with "meme", "perception" with "belief": https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/03010066187746...
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?
But it's not like the people making them are professors of the Department of Memetic Research. The grandparent comment about Memetics being so "impactful" is somewhat like English professors taking credit for the fact that we're speaking English.