[FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme

Sun Aug 13 19:39:47 EDT 2017

Glen writes:

"It took a really long time, which is one of my reasons for rejecting memetics.  If ideas were real, then they could change instantaneously."

Every day I form hypotheses about how I think this or that experiment or code modification will go, and often I have to confront contrary evidence.   I would say I have a pretty fast turnover of ideas.

If I work with other people on these things, they will agree that some issues are settled, and other issues remain ambiguous.  The language evolves with shared experience, and in such a way that feelings become less and less part of it.  I don't think it has anything to do with when lunchtime is.   Other people it is all about lunchtime, oxytocin and stuff like that.

How are social issues any different?

Marcus

________________________________
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of ┣glen┫ <gepropella at gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, August 13, 2017 4:34:03 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme

I'm not a scholar, but I don't really think Szasz was anti-psychology, per se.  He was a long-time member of the psychicatric association and all that jazz.  But he pulled no punches when policing his community ... something we all should do more of ... moderate muslims bear the responsibility for allowing radicals to steal their religion just as much as intelligent Trump voters bear responsibility for the MAGA-morons ... just as I bear responsibility for what the Clinton team did to Sanders.  So, when I say Szaszian, this is what I mean.  I could tell more stories about my brushes with talk therapy.  But I'd rather try to stay on topic: the structure and mechanisms by which ideas evolve (evolve as in "change over time", not genes and selection).

I've said before on this list that I think the only reason we can communicate is because we share a common body structure (eyes, fingers, pancreas, etc.).  The only reason I can communicate with my cat is because they also have hunger hormones and pain-mediating nerves.  Etc.  This implies (and I can directly assert) that ideas only evolve if/when bodies evolve.  E.g. I think one of the reasons Hawking comes up with such fantastic alternative hypotheses for physical phenomena is *because* he once had a well functioning body and has seen those functions evolve and disappear.  Another e.g. is that I can empathize with the scaredy-cat nazis because I, too, have a functioning fight or flight response.  I was severely homophobic as a kid and up into college.  And I've been conscious of how that irrational emotion has subsided over time.  But I'd always had and tried to respect my gay friends throughout.  I admitted that, and they treated me appropriately because, I was the one with the "illness", not them.

So, if thoughts supervene on the body, then what changed in my body so that my homophobia subsided?  Well, my hypothesis is mostly reinforcement and signals like oxytocin.  The less I had bad feelings associated with the other homophobes in Texas (including my dad) and the more I studied, competed against, and partied with my gay friends, the more good feelings I began to associate with homosexuals.  It took a really long time, which is one of my reasons for rejecting memetics.  If ideas were real, then they could change instantaneously.  But they're not.  What's real are hormones and neurons.

Does that help?

On 08/13/2017 11:59 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> I'm definitely not the one to educate you (or anyone) on this. Following your allusion to Szaszian anti-psychology, what I'm seeking is common ground on whether there is even a valid question which the ideas of cultural evolution and more pointedly, memetics purports to answer (or "structure usefully" perhaps in your terms?).
>
> I'm intuitive at my root, so if a set of heuristics, metaphors, rules-of-thumb, semi-formal analogies, notional models, seem to be failing in some significant way, I am happy to back off to a more fundamental level and seek fresh experiential bedrock to rebuild my house of cards upon.
>
> May I ask how you DO structure your thinking around the *apparent* (or is this an illusion) structured "progress" of human knowledge/behaviour/culture/society/civilization???     Naturally many see our current state on the brink of (apparently) climate disaster, collapse of capitalism, fizzling out of representative democracy, possibility of a (regional?) nuclear exchange, etc.  as evidence that "we have not evolved!", but I would claim that is a gross misapprehension of the term "evolved".   I'd say we HAVE evolved to the state we are in (collectively).
>
> For the sake of discussion, I'm happy to drop the attempt of the term "meme" to be a strong analogy to a "gene", but I'm guessing that is not enough to help you with the specifics of your skepticism?   I'm poking AT the perimeters of your skepticism NOT to pry it off of you, but rather to understand if there is something specifically useful (to me) in that crust for my own skepticism (or even my pollyanna).

On 08/13/2017 12:12 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:>
>
> Glen -
>> Ha! You see? That's not even wrong. 8^) But it's more plausible than asserting that my ideas are mutated and crossed over from ... yours ... or Szasz' ... or my mom's, for example.
> What I'm trying to tickle apart here is what we do with the very idea that you might have a psuedo-Szaszian perspective on psychology or that you "are a Skeptic".
>
> forget "meme", let's try "pattern" on in *at least* a semi-formal sense like the Alexandrian idea of Pattern Languages?  And what of "Alexandrian Patterns" ?    Whether that is a "meme" or a "pattern" or just a "rose by any other name" is what I'm looking to get an alternative grasp of...
>
> If we admit patterns that can be copied, modified by intention or by ignorance or by chance, and can even be mixed with other patterns, then we have at least a partial registration in the target domain of biological evolution/genetics.
>
> I'm trying not to argue this from a perspective of persuading you, but rather on "helping" you deconstruct the general idea that biological evolution (based in Genetics) is in any way a model for social/cultural evolution.  Or to deconstruct the more specifics of "memetics" and replace it with something more prosaic but useful perhaps?
>
> Or maybe I'm barking up the wrong three, maybe you are trying to tell me (as I think Szasz tries to tell us about mental illness) that there is no there there?

--
␦glen?
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