Explaining memes simplistically: a draft
Jukka Korpela
English, without using the vocabulary of genetics. I souped up the
following. Any comments? (Background: I intend to use some memetic
concepts when analyzing some phenomena in Web page design - for example,
why things like frames, navigational pulldown menus, and tiny fonts are
so common, despite usability experts' advice. To make my point, I need
to refer to some simple introduction to memes, which is readable to
biologically challenged, too.
An introduction to memes
"Meme" is a word that was coined by Richard Dawkins in
his book "The Selfish Gene". It has been discussed a lot,
and it has itself become a meme. When reading Susan
Blackmore's "The Meme Machine", I realized that even
in treatises specifically devoted to the meme concept,
the fundamentals are not explained very well. This is partly
natural since the concept itself is vague and changing.
But I decided to write this introduction to memes as
an attempted clarification. I am fairly sure that people
who talk about memes mean rather different ideas by that word,
and saying things as explicitly and simply as possible should
help in seeing what those different ideas are and in discussing
them. So this is my view on memes, or the particular mutant of
the meme concept in my mind. I will try to explain the idea
without any reference to genes, or to biology in general. My point
is that such a presentation should be possible if Dawkins and
Blackmore are right.
A meme is an idea, any idea. It is something in human mind.
It could be the idea (the essential content) of a joke, or
a scientific hypothesis, or the idea that we shouldn't eat meat.
The human mind is full of ideas, some of which live a very short
lives whereas others might have been adopted in early childhood
and kept through the individual's whole life. Some ideas have
the property of being either true or false, or perhaps being
partly true and partly false, on the basis of their correspondence
with the reality outside the human mind. Or perhaps you have
a different truth theory. The point, anyway, is that some ideas
are propositions in the logical sense; a scientific hypothesis,
is a typical example. But most ideas aren't propositions;
a joke is just a story, and whether it is based on actual events
is irrelevant. The principle "eating meat is wrong", or any
moral principle, might be regarded as a proposition by
some philosophers. And an idea that merely consists of, say,
giving preference to Dom Perignon over other brands of champagne
surely isn't a proposition. (It still need not be just a matter
of taste; it might be an idea adopted from literature and films,
even before tasting any champagne.)
Although animals and extraterrestrial beings and man-made
systems might conceivably have something that can be called
a mind, and thus memes, I'll discuss ideas in human mind only,
since we know for sure that there is such a thing as human mind
and we live with it. Whether we really know what the human mind
is and how it works is a different issue.
Several treatises on the meme concept do not make it clear whether
a written, drawn or otherwise recorded idea is a meme, too. The
terminology isn't that relevant. The relevant thing is to distinguish
between an idea in (human) mind and a physical presentation of an idea.
The latter can exist independently of human mind, but it has been
created by a human mind and it is insignificant unless it will be
received and grasped by a human mind. We could say that written texts,
for example, contain ideas in dormant state. Similarly, human speech
itself is an expression of ideas in the physical word outside one's
mind. Although it is common not to make a clear distinction between
an idea and its expression, and although no such distinction is
usually needed in everyday life, it is essential for an analysis
of memes.
Consider a joke you have heard. If you didn't find it funny, you will
probably forget it. If it was very funny, you will probably remember
it and tell it a few times, perhaps even publish it somewhere.
Lots of jokes are told every day, and most of them are either
variants of old jokes which thus propagate or else jokes that will be
forgotten; only a few new jokes will be remembered and told again.
So there is a "struggle for life" between jokes, so to say,
and "survival of the funniest". Moreover, between variants of a joke,
there is competition too.
Some variation of jokes looks fairly irrelevant; it perhaps involves
just simple substitutions. When you hear a joke that Englishmen
tell about the Irish, you will probably substitute the Swedes or
the Russians for the Irish if you tell that joke among Finnish people.
After all, most nationality jokes are "portable", since they
reflect prejudices and other ideas about neighboring nations
or populations. "Localization" of nationality jokes is comparable
to biological evolution in small scale: adaptation to the local
environment. But the pressure towards localization is very strong.
A very good joke about three Scandinavians in a falling airplane
will hardly survive as such in an Asian country where nobody ever
saw a Scandinavian, still less understood the stereotypies that
Scandinavian nations have about each other.
In the competition of jokes, being funny is important but not
the only important factor. If you hear a particularly tasteless
joke, you may well remember it for some time, perhaps due to its
nauseating effect. You might also remember a joke about your
favorite politician, or, perhaps more probably, about a politician
you hate, even if the joke itself was not that good. And if you
meet the president of the United States once in your life and
he tells you a joke, you will probably remember the joke no matter what.
And you might tell the joke, at least indirectly by telling that
the president told you such-and-such a joke.
It is important to note that calling a proposition a meme does
not imply that it is false as a proposition. This should be
self-evident, but people often mock ideas for their being adopted
just because they sound good and fashionable. We don't usually
mock ideas that way if we favor them or, in the case of propositions,
know or believe that they are true.
For memes that are propositions, their truth value is not always
irrelevant. In particular, in science and in some other contexts,
the truth value, or at least people's views on the truth value,
is crucial for the survival of some types of memes.
Similarly, for memes that describe methods or procedures for
doing something, their practical effectiveness is apparently
most important. When someone invents a new method for producing
some chemical and publishes it, the meme becomes widespread if
the method has benefits like producing better quality, being
cheaper, etc. This is one of the key areas of that part of human
behavior that can be called rational.
But even in scientific communities and in technical matters,
the survival of memes depends on non-rational factors too.
The human mind is never completely rational. Moreover, rationality
may involve other factors than evaluating the truth value of
a proposition. It can, for example, be quite rational from an
individual's point of view to support a scientific theory even
if he thinks it's false or at least not as good as a competing
theory, if this is the only way to get some scholarship or some job.
The discussion above is very general, but memetics is not just a
theoretical view. For example, when asking "how do I get my message
through" in communication, the memetic approach is to ask:
in the assumed environment where my idea (meme) will fight for
survival, what factors would favor it? As a simple example,
the tactics of including a good joke into your message, or
even formulating your message as a joke with serious content
embedded into it, is based on an assumption that coupling your
meme with a meme with a good survival value will make your
meme more successful. (Whether this is actually true surely depends.
If the joke is not intrinsically related to your message, the
odds are that the joke will be adopted and your message won't,
i.e. the coupling will break.)
To summarize, there is great variation in the "survival" of memes,
i.e. in the probabilities that an idea gets adopted, stored, and
propagated. And there is no single cause that determines the
"survival". Instead, in different mental and social environments,
different factors operate in memes' struggle for life. "Memetics"
is a way of looking at the world of man from this perspective,
trying to analyze those factors and their effect in various
circumstances.
--
Yucca
Paul Onstad
> following. Any comments? (Background: I intend to use some memetic
> concepts when analyzing some phenomena in Web page design - for example,
> why things like frames, navigational pulldown menus, and tiny fonts are
> so common, despite usability experts' advice.
People use frames since they're easier to program. You don't need much
ability to use them. The same could be said for pulldown menus.
> the fundamentals are not explained very well. This is partly
> natural since the concept itself is vague and changing.
The people getting the most out of memes are psychologists. That's because
real science will never be able to find them. Psychology has had a long
history of dabbling in the occult.
-Paul
Jukka Korpela
>Jukka Korpela wrote:
>
>> following. Any comments? (Background: I intend to use some memetic
>> concepts when analyzing some phenomena in Web page design - for example,
>> why things like frames, navigational pulldown menus, and tiny fonts are
>> so common, despite usability experts' advice.
>
>People use frames since they're easier to program. You don't need much
>ability to use them. The same could be said for pulldown menus.
My comment on the background was intended just to illustrate _why_ I
tried to compose a simplistic explanation. I have no objection to
discussing those particular memes here, though I'm afraid it gets rather
specialized. But briefly, using frames is _not_ easier than not using
frames; in fact, a very large part of people's questions in HTML
newsgroups revolves around frames, and quite often around their basic
use. The same applies even stronger to pulldown menus; as I have
explained in quite some detail in my article at
http://www.irt.org/articles/js200/index.htm , navigational pulldown
menus (especially when implemented right, but even when implemented the
usual way) are less useful and more complex than the obvious
alternative, a list of links. - The meme of regarding HTML authoring as
"programming" in interesting on its own account; it usually survives
only in circles with little experience on computer programming.
>The people getting the most out of memes are psychologists. That's because
>real science will never be able to find them. Psychology has had a long
>history of dabbling in the occult.
Oh, I see. You wish to illustrate yet another common meme. I'm afraid
it's too complex (no pun intended) for the purposes of simplistic
explanation. It takes quite some understanding - above the average among
people, probably not above the average of the readers of this group - to
see the nature of people's stereotypies about "psychology" for example.
Admittedly they are a typical case of ideas that people have about
things _before_ having any actual acquaintance with them; most people
would probably find out, in sufficient introspection, that they "knew"
what psychology is _before_ meeting a living psychologist or reading a
psychology book.
--
Yucca
Paul Onstad
> >People use frames since they're easier to program. You don't need much
> >ability to use them. The same could be said for pulldown menus.
>
> My comment on the background was intended just to illustrate _why_ I
> tried to compose a simplistic explanation. I have no objection to
> discussing those particular memes here, though I'm afraid it gets rather
> specialized. But briefly, using frames is _not_ easier than not using
> frames; in fact, a very large part of people's questions in HTML
> newsgroups revolves around frames, and quite often around their basic
> use. The same applies even stronger to pulldown menus; as I have
> explained in quite some detail in my article at
> http://www.irt.org/articles/js200/index.htm , navigational pulldown
> menus (especially when implemented right, but even when implemented the
> usual way) are less useful and more complex than the obvious
> alternative, a list of links. - The meme of regarding HTML authoring as
> "programming" in interesting on its own account; it usually survives
> only in circles with little experience on computer programming.
..Probably more like: people who were programming long before they all
started regarding themselves as "authors."
I like links but the downside is that they require the concentration to stay
on the main subject. It's all too easy to get lost in something more
interesting but irrelevant to one's original purpose.
> >The people getting the most out of memes are psychologists. That's because
> >real science will never be able to find them. Psychology has had a long
> >history of dabbling in the occult.
>
> Oh, I see. You wish to illustrate yet another common meme. I'm afraid
> it's too complex (no pun intended) for the purposes of simplistic
> explanation. It takes quite some understanding - above the average among
> people, probably not above the average of the readers of this group - to
> see the nature of people's stereotypies about "psychology" for example.
> Admittedly they are a typical case of ideas that people have about
> things _before_ having any actual acquaintance with them; most people
> would probably find out, in sufficient introspection, that they "knew"
> what psychology is _before_ meeting a living psychologist or reading a
> psychology book.
Heck, some of my best friends are psychologists :) and some of whom
recognize that the field is without an anchor and that the only real success
they've had is with the psychiatrist's drugs. Of course, they can still be
your friend.
..Back to memes, you use them as most do, far too broadly and typically in a
pejorative sense. It's just the intellectual's way of saying you've got
cooties. IOW, you're irrational, wrong, or stupid. That's my objection to
the whole metaphor....meaningless, science-couched analysis....usually of
others, but sometimes lovingly applied to one's own, favorite neurosis ("my
head is a meme").
Deep in meme-thought is the belief that we all are machines and that (gosh)
machines are rational so there's got to be something wrong. That's the crux
of the problem.
-Paul
ps: my first home page (below) is about 5 days old. I got a lot from your
article (when I didn't get lost)
http://www.sihope.com/~ponstad
Martin Willett
"Paul Onstad" <pon...@sihope.com> wrote in message
news:3A7AD296...@sihope.com...
>
> The people getting the most out of memes are psychologists. That's because
> real science will never be able to find them. Psychology has had a long
> history of dabbling in the occult.
>
[If this goes wrong I blame the drink.]
Psychology is a proper subject, isn't it? It must be, there are professors
of it.
I have often thought about the memetic history of academic disciplines. Is
it possible for an academic discipline, once given legitimacy and status and
professorships, ever to be disbanded, no matter how little useful insights
the studies produce?
Has any subject ever been wound up? Has any University department ever
closed?
Are we stuck with media studies and women's literature etc. for all time?
Please tell me that a subject can be killed off.
I have the feeling that once a subject has once achieved academic legitimacy
it will attract new disciples to fight its cause and become
self-perpetuating even if it is fundamentally shallow and half-baked. Once a
subject has a professor it has a champion, and all professors are equal so
therefore all subjects with professors are equal. That is obviously wrong
but it has an unarguable logic in academic circles. Once a subject has
attained legitimacy it will not relinquish it voluntarily and no outside
force will have the courage to call its bluff. As long as there are bright
people willing to state that such a discipline is reasonable it has equal
status with mathematics, physics, archaeology or history. So all a subject
has to do to gain immortality is to pass a single test; convince one
University funding committee once, anywhere on the planet, and it will live
for ever.
Please tell me I'm wrong, I don't like being this cynical and unopposed.
Martin
Author of http://www.mememachine.cwc.net/
steph...@mindspring.com
<Martin....@cwcom.net> wrote:
> I have the feeling that once a subject has once achieved academic legitimacy
> it will attract new disciples to fight its cause and become
> self-perpetuating even if it is fundamentally shallow and half-baked.
Was alchemy ever an academic discipline?
Stephen Diamond
Martin Willett
<steph...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:stephend15-04...@user-2initl8.dialup.mindspring.com...
of anything more recent. A lot of first rate scientists of the past were
taken in by these two.
Kit
Now, I'll be honest. I don't have an example of a department with a professor
that was in vogue in the 1800s which has since been disbanded. What I do have an
example of comes from a tour a professor of New England folk and myth gave me of
the Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, MA. I'm writing this from memory, so
please look at the gist.
A couple of hundred years ago, phrenology, the study of the conformation of the
skull based on the belief that it is indicative of character and mental capacity,
was held in high esteem. A particular "scientist" of that field gained great
fame and monetary fortune. When he died, he was placed at the front entrance to
the cemetery with a large memorial in full view to everyone. After his death,
phrenology was realized to have no basis in science and was totally discredited.
The cemetery has let his monument gradually be hidden by bushes and trees, and
isn't even on the official map.
I suspect that, though it may take longer in academia proper, the same thing
would happen. Perhaps someone doesn't think women's studies or queer studies are
valid. I think that is irrelevant. The field will grow and mature like any
other field, and if it ceases to be useful, it will disappear. It has been
useful already in allowing people to look at things from another viewpoint.
Sometimes the point of the debate isn't winning it, but in seeing other
perspectives.
When we look at science there are many examples of theories clung to strongly,
both in ancient times and recently, that have had to be revised, and are being
revised.
Now a more interesting discussion might be why you're so ant media studies and
women's literature. (-:
From a purely practical point of view, American culture is so dominated by media,
it seems reasonable for people to study it. And if in 100 years we're all a
telepathic-based culture, I'm sure media studies will have vanished as being
archaic.
I guess, in the end, time will tell. (-:
Kit
is to say that if you are really breaking it down and trying to to rely on
biology, perhaps you should also steer clear of the "survival of the
fittest" metaphor? Is there a way to describe it without depending on a
Darwinist view? If there isn't, perhaps you should start by explicitly
making the metaphor of survival of the fittest, and then going on to
explain the meme as analogous.
<tangent>
As for web pages, I've just finished a lovely HTML course and, as we all
know, the web is rife with bad code. But I am wary of usability expert's
advice. Frames are easier WHEN a page is set up properly using them. Most
web pages use them quite poorly.
But then, most web designers don't know much of anything and just put
something out there that kind of works.
As for pull-down menus, I think that is obvious. It is simply easier to
click on something than to click and hold, wait for something to appear,
scan, move, and release.
Perhaps web pages are a great idea of meme passage since the quickest way
to "learn" how to do something is to see a cool page that does something,
view source, and copy into your own page. It may not fit the structure of
your page, or help people use your page, but you thought it was cool and
by, golly! you got it in your page! *giggle*
</tangent>
Anyway, I'll reread over your post and see what else sifts into my mind.
And check out your html link and see if you've found the same things I
have. (-:
Jukka Korpela wrote:
>
> Consider a joke you have heard. If you didn't find it funny, you will
> probably forget it. If it was very funny, you will probably remember
> it and tell it a few times, perhaps even publish it somewhere.
> Lots of jokes are told every day, and most of them are either
> variants of old jokes which thus propagate or else jokes that will be
> forgotten; only a few new jokes will be remembered and told again.
> So there is a "struggle for life" between jokes, so to say,
> and "survival of the funniest". Moreover, between variants of a joke,
> there is competition too.
>
>
> Yucca
Kit
preview option on this thing ...
Kit wrote:
> <tangent>
> </tangent>
>
Jukka Korpela
>- - if you are really breaking it down and trying to [not] to rely on
>biology, perhaps you should also steer clear of the "survival of the
>fittest" metaphor?
Perhaps. I mentioned those phrases in my essay without thinking much
what their nature is, just to associate memes with well-known phrases of
popularized biology. This might be a mistake for a couple of reasons,
one of which is that those phrases are vague and often misleading. After
all, "survival of the fittest" should really be "survival of the
survivor", i.e. tautological, and then we should take some steps to
analyze what part of evolution theory is _not_ tautological.
My basic aim was not to avoid comparisons or analogies with genes and
biology. Rather, to discuss memes as something that _could_ exist and be
analyzed even if there were no biological evolution. Consider a
hypothetical world where living beings, including some intelligent,
self-conscious, and language-using, imitation-capable species, have
really been created by a divine power without evolution of any kind.
Ideas would acts as memes in their minds.
--
Yucca
Greg Kavalec
news:stephend15-04...@user-2initl8.dialup.mindspring.com...
died, mutation and evolution played out and the surviving meme-complexes
(descendants) are today alive and well and are known as Chemistry and
Astronomy.
adam
Thats a nice way to look at it. What makes Astronomy and Chemistry more
"fit" than their pseudo-science counterparts? Granted they are better
scientific theories (able to make accurate predictions), but why should
that increase their likelyhood of existence? This seems obvious almost,
but I wonder if someone could spell it out to me.
I remember biologist Stephen J Gould saying once that although it may seem
that genetic evolution produces more complex (humans) organisms, thats
really not the case. Is it different in memetic evolution?
Adam
Jukka Korpela
>What makes Astronomy and Chemistry more
>"fit" than their pseudo-science counterparts?
Are they more fit? Think about newspapers and magazines. Horoscopes
abound. I'm pretty sure that people generally read them more than
astronomical news. (Someone surely says that such horoscopes are not
"real astrology", just as someone else says that science news in common
media are not "real science". :-))
>Granted they are better
>scientific theories (able to make accurate predictions), but why should
>that increase their likelyhood of existence? This seems obvious almost,
>but I wonder if someone could spell it out to me.
The ability to make accurate predictions is just one possible factor in
the struggle, and in most cases not relevant at all. It matters when
memes are applied to something practical, technological, or scientific.
Rejecting a theory that has false implications is by no means universal,
and it reflects a meme complex of a rather general nature (meta-meme, so
to say) which consists of some fundamental principles of science,
technology, and "useful arts". This meme complex itself is most
interesting, but the point is that where it prevails, it strongly
affects the environment for memes somehow related to such issues. (The
effect is not as big as one might think and as one often says.
Scientists surely have non-rational and even irrational beliefs, as
anyone.)
--
Yucca
adam
On Mon, 5 Mar 2001, Jukka Korpela wrote:
> adam <mead...@ecn.purdue.edu> wrote:
>
> >What makes Astronomy and Chemistry more
> >"fit" than their pseudo-science counterparts?
>
> Are they more fit? Think about newspapers and magazines. Horoscopes
> abound. I'm pretty sure that people generally read them more than
> astronomical news. (Someone surely says that such horoscopes are not
> "real astrology", just as someone else says that science news in common
> media are not "real science". :-))
That is a good point. I forget how practiced astrology (and maybe even
alchemy?) still is among most people without a strong science education.
>
> >Granted they are better
> >scientific theories (able to make accurate predictions), but why should
> >that increase their likelyhood of existence? This seems obvious almost,
> >but I wonder if someone could spell it out to me.
>
> The ability to make accurate predictions is just one possible factor in
> the struggle, and in most cases not relevant at all. It matters when
> memes are applied to something practical, technological, or scientific.
True.
> Rejecting a theory that has false implications is by no means universal,
> and it reflects a meme complex of a rather general nature (meta-meme, so
> to say) which consists of some fundamental principles of science,
> technology, and "useful arts". This meme complex itself is most
> interesting, but the point is that where it prevails, it strongly
> affects the environment for memes somehow related to such issues. (The
> effect is not as big as one might think and as one often says.
> Scientists surely have non-rational and even irrational beliefs, as
> anyone.)
So the tendency to reject false memes is itself a meme... Very
interesting. I am still new to thinking about memes and using the genetic
evolutionary model as a guide book can only go so far it seems. I think
it would help if there were specific definitions for memes of different
types/sizes/etc. Some sort of classification meme would be nice and
hopefully wouldnt limit the theory any.
Is memetic theory taught at the University level as far as anyone knows?
I am taking an evolutionary psychology class currently and although we are
required to read "The Selfish Gene," I don't think we will come to the
importance of memes in influencing the evolution of our brains.
thanks,
Adam
> --
> Yucca
>
Kit
adam wrote:
> That is a good point. I forget how practiced astrology (and maybe even
> alchemy?) still is among most people without a strong science education.
The two are not mutually exclusive. You can be a top-rate scientist for your
day job and have religious beliefs that include astrology ... one doesn't
negate the other because they have entirely different arenas. Just like you
can be a Christian who beliefs in God and creation and still be a scientist
who believes in the big bang and evolution.
Another point -- in olden days, not just anyone could do astrology. It
involved a lot of math and observation of the heavens. This point is made
clearer when you look at modern day horoscopes. Your sun sign is supposed to
be what sign the sun was in when you were born, and that's true 500 years ago,
but the earth's axis has a wobble to it and now we're off by about a sign. At
some point people stopped doing the math and started copying down dates
(Taurus is April 21 to May 20th, etc.)
I have a lovely night sky program and was on the web using
birth-chart-generating programs and trying to figure out the math between the
two. It's a shame the link has been lost. All the astrology books I've
found at some point go to getting figures from an ephremedis. Nowhere does it
tell you the math for _calculating_ an ephremedis.
This is a lost opportunity for getting people excited about math and
astronomy. Astrology immediately captures the imagination. When you then go
to the complex math needed to calculate the many different types of birth
charts, it makes the math exciting as well. You don't even need to get to
interpretation of such charts. Just creating them is fascinating.
Someone must know the math, since they're able to program their web
applications to generate them, but none of the expert astrologers I've talked
to have explained the math at all. They must be using a program to make the
chart, and gotten all their expertise in interpretation.
steph...@mindspring.com
wrote:
> adam wrote:
>
> > That is a good point. I forget how practiced astrology (and maybe even
> > alchemy?) still is among most people without a strong science education.
>
> The two are not mutually exclusive. You can be a top-rate scientist for your
> day job and have religious beliefs that include astrology ...
Can you name a *single* *contemporary* top-rate scientist who believes in
astrology?
Some day there will be no top rate scientists who have religious beliefs.
srd
Greg Kavalec
news:Pine.GSO.4.31.010304...@atom.ecn.purdue.edu...
>
<snip>
> Thats a nice way to look at it. What makes Astronomy and Chemistry more
> "fit" than their pseudo-science counterparts? Granted they are better
> scientific theories (able to make accurate predictions), but why should
> that increase their likelyhood of existence? This seems obvious almost,
> but I wonder if someone could spell it out to me.
>
I don't turn lead into gold, I get my head chopped off.
I make gunpowder and get rich and have lots of kids.
Alchemy meme dies, chemistry meme multiplies.
Kit
steph...@mindspring.com wrote:
> Can you name a *single* *contemporary* top-rate scientist who believes in
> astrology?
>
> Some day there will be no top rate scientists who have religious beliefs.
>
> srd
I think that's a silly assertion. Religion serves and entirely different purpose
than science. I don't think eventually all top-rate scientists will be atheists.
I do think that it would be interesting to do a study of how atheists cope with
life's trials, such as death and loss, things that religion usually provides
support for.
steph...@mindspring.com
wrote:
Astroloy too serves purposes different from science. It provides
predictions about the future, where scientifically such predictions would
be *necessarily* impossible.
I agree, though, that religion and astrology do serve substantially
different purposes. Freud call religion a mass neurosis; astrology is
little more than an ignorant superstition.
But, I cannot see how religion can survive indefinitely, as science closes
off more and more of the loopholes. When it is seen clearly,
scientifically and not only philosophically, that consciousness is a brain
process and that free will does not exist, religion will lose all
plausibility to the scientifically competent.
I assume religion will be replaced by some other form of mass neurosis,
one not directly in conflict with science. Certain forms of directive
psychotherapy are already, unfortunately, showing the way.
Stephen Diamond
JohnwR1873
more about how to direct it, we shall have less need for a crutch such as
religion. And while we are at it, we may get rid of sports for seniors and
realize that many of them are kids games. We might also be able to do
something about guns and cars and all the rest of the harmful junk we so dearly
love. How about the time when we direct what happens? Happy days. John
Larry Shultis
"Kit" <Kit...@obscured-disk.com> wrote in message
news:3AA90F9B...@obscured-disk.com...
>
>
> steph...@mindspring.com wrote:
>
> > Can you name a *single* *contemporary* top-rate scientist who believes
in
> > astrology?
> >
> > Some day there will be no top rate scientists who have religious
beliefs.
> >
> > srd
>
> I think that's a silly assertion. Religion serves and entirely different
purpose
> than science. I don't think eventually all top-rate scientists will be
atheists.
As a scientist, I too, doubt that in the foreseeable future all top
scientists
will find reason to be applicable to all aspects of their lives rather than
juggling their lives between reason and faith. The power of memes is too
great for most people to overcome .
>
> I do think that it would be interesting to do a study of how atheists cope
with
> life's trials, such as death and loss, things that religion usually
provides
> support for.
Having been an atheist all my 61 years and having had many personal
tragedies during my life, I can say that an atheist handles death and loss
emotionally similar to the theist. He just leaves out much of the
ritualistic-mumbo-jumbo memes held and passed on by the theist.
Larry
>
steph...@mindspring.com
gree...@BOLLOCKSyahoo.co.uk wrote:
> All science can be demonstrated right in front of your eyes, and once
> you've seen something, you believe it forever. I think that's why
> science is stronger than astrology or aura reading.
>
> You could look at people who believe in ghosts, almost everyone who's
> "seen" one, emphatically believes in the supernatural, and many people
> who haven't, don't.
"Seeing" is a success verb. One cannot properly be said to "see" something
that isn't there. One only thinks one does.
Psychotics have "seen" all sorts of things. Yet, they often stop believing
them when given anti-psychotic drugs. Is this a counter-example to your
point, or, in the language of a recent thread, "the exception which proves
the rule"?
Martin Willett
<steph...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:stephend15-14...@user-2iniui7.dialup.mindspring.com...
Exceptions don't prove rules in the sense of confirming them, they prove
them in the sense of guns being proved by being filled with a double-sized
charge, or puddings are proved by eating them. Prove means test. Exceptions
test rules. If the rule survives the test it is a rule, if not we need a new
rule.
Or put another way, exceptions proving rules is called science.
steph...@mindspring.com
<Martin....@cwcom.net> wrote:
> Exceptions don't prove rules in the sense of confirming them, they prove
> them in the sense of guns being proved by being filled with a double-sized
> charge, or puddings are proved by eating them. Prove means test. Exceptions
> test rules. If the rule survives the test it is a rule, if not we need a new
> rule.
>
> Or put another way, exceptions proving rules is called science.
According to Karl Popper, in any event. But then there is the critique
that falsificationism is only a reformulation of discredited
verificationism.
srd
Hexar
steph...@mindspring.com wrote in message ...
>In article <3AA7CFE5...@obscured-disk.com>,
Kit...@obscured-disk.com
>wrote:
>
>> adam wrote:
>>
>> > That is a good point. I forget how practiced astrology (and
maybe even
>> > alchemy?) still is among most people without a strong science
education.
>>
>> The two are not mutually exclusive. You can be a top-rate
scientist for your
>> day job and have religious beliefs that include astrology ...
>
>Can you name a *single* *contemporary* top-rate scientist who
believes in
>astrology?
>
Reverend Doctor Hexar le Saipe
Velvet Earth Machine Cult
hexar(at)minister(dot)com
"A Dangerous Toy. This toy is being made for the extreme priority
the good looks. The little part when the sharp part which gets hurt
is swallowed is contained generously.
Only the person who can take responsibility by itself is to play."
Martin Willett
<steph...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:stephend15-14...@user-2iniubi.dialup.mindspring.com...
I have been vaguely aware of Popper's ideas in pre-digested ready-to-serve
form and it seems a reasonably good analysis.
The re-formulation of the common saying above through re-interpretation of
the meaning of the word "prove" is, I believe, my own, I am not aware of
picking it up from anybody else. Whether it is an original insight or an
independent later re-discovery (like Columbus's) I do not know.
I have just realized that this seems to be a thread I started. Has anybody
come up with any subjects that have run their course? Any subjects that have
attained full scientific respectability and then later been disbanded? My
suspicion is that the process of making professors and departments is strong
enough to keep a subject going despite only its acolytes thinking it has any
relevance at all. Is there a process capable of kicking the cuckoo's egg out
of the nest? I suspect there isn't, which makes the spawning of new subjects
very dangerous.
adam
On Sat, 17 Mar 2001, Hexar wrote:
>
> steph...@mindspring.com wrote in message ...
> >In article <3AA7CFE5...@obscured-disk.com>,
> Kit...@obscured-disk.com
> >wrote:
> >
> >> adam wrote:
> >>
> >> > That is a good point. I forget how practiced astrology (and
> maybe even
> >> > alchemy?) still is among most people without a strong science
> education.
> >>
> >> The two are not mutually exclusive. You can be a top-rate
> scientist for your
> >> day job and have religious beliefs that include astrology ...
> >
> >Can you name a *single* *contemporary* top-rate scientist who
> believes in
> >astrology?
> >
> One that _believes_ or one that will _admit_ that he believes?
>
I guess we would have to settle on the latter now wouldn't we?
Adam
Matthew Hyde
Some day there will be no top rate scientists who have no religious
beliefs.
Eris de Suzerain
Matthew Hyde <mdo...@mtu.edu> wrote in message
news:3AD0C1FD...@mtu.edu...
Some day there will be no top rate religions which have scientific beliefs.
Andy M
science denial in them.
--
Andy M
"Eris de Suzerain" <er...@bitchgoddess.com> wrote in message
news:td1kt89...@corp.supernews.com...
Matthew Hyde
>
> I think all the really successful religions have already got a fair bit of
> science denial in them.
>
Oh, sorry, wrong newsgroup :)
--
Matt Hyde
906-487-3406
mdo...@mtu.edu
adam
On Sun, 8 Apr 2001, Andy M wrote:
> I think all the really successful religions have already got a fair bit of
> science denial in them.
>
> --
>
> Andy M
>
I see religion as essentially immature science. It tries to understand
and explain the Universe, but in the end, is immensely inferior in its
predictive power. For our species to jump from utter ignorance to
enlightened science on its first bound is near impossible, so we have had
to stumble forward through metaphysics, psuedoscience, and religion.
Religion is a stable meme because it is psychologically appealing and is
of some use in guiding moral behavior. Science is a stable meme because
it is the closest approximation to truth we have found and is of immense
use in guiding adaptive/constructive behavior. Arguablely, they fight for
the at least some of the same "territory" in our minds. Which is superior
in governing this territory and how strong a function is this superiority
of each unique brain? of each unique experience set?
Religion seems to only to have current use in the social sciences (how to
behave morally, how to live a productive life, etc), which science and
math have been less adept at addressing. That is changing as I type, and,
eventually, once science and math provide direction to all human behavior,
religion will be relegated to only making predictions that occur
completely outside the realm of verifiability and will then be
fundamentally impossible for science to displace.
meandering along...
AdamM
Chris Abraham
--
Chris Abraham <ch...@memes.org> +1 202 452 7442 vm
[MemeSpace:VirtualCommunity:ConsiderYourselfInfected!]
<http://memes.org><Box 15163 WDC 20003 USA><MemeSpace>
Chris Abraham
> of anything more recent. A lot of first rate scientists of the past were
> taken in by these two.
Taken in? That's a little like something they might have said about their
predecessors, methinks.