I took Yvain’s post as being about unpacking the idea of “disease” in general — to the point that if we know facts A, B, C, D, E, F about a particular thing P, there doesn’t remain a question to be asked about whether P “is” a disease.
I’d like to see the same unpacking applied to the idea of “memetic disease” or “memetic infection” used in this post.
It is good to unpack what we mean by a word when the word confuses us, when despite knowing all the relevant information about a thing, we still aren’t sure if that thing is in the described category. Do you have an example of such a thing that may or may not be a memetic infection or disease? If not, asking to unpack in particular the meaning of “disease” as used technically in this post, just because the word “disease” as commonly used has been excellently unpacked elsewhere, strikes me as cargo cult rationality.
Do you have an example of such a thing that may or may not be a memetic infection or disease?
Religion is sometimes considered to be an example of a debated case. Dawkins claims it is a “virus of the mind”—while others emphasise religion’s adaptive aspects. Of course, nobody (in the know) seriously doubts whether it is largely “memetic”, but whether it is “parasitic” is a debated issue.
For a case where the issue is whether someting is memetic or genetic, consider adaptions to language. It is often not clear whether the fit between humans and language is more the result of organic adaptations or cultural adaptations.
Sure, people may argue about whether or not religion is harmful, but that is not the same as agreeing about whether it is harmful and still arguing about whether it is a “disease”.
Harmful human cultural practices are classified as being parasites, competitors or amensalists in memetics. However there are hardly any competitors or amensalists hosted by humans—since most cultural practices need to benefit from their hosts by draining them of resources in order to exist—except for a fewmemetic hitchhikers.
I think if you deny deleterious cultural practices can usefully be classified as a form of parasitism then you must do so on the basis of some kind of criticism of the memetic framework. As far as I know the technical criticisms of memetics are all bogus. So: the most critics can say is that they don’t like the idea—or that they find it distasteful.
I took Yvain’s post as being about unpacking the idea of “disease” in general — to the point that if we know facts A, B, C, D, E, F about a particular thing P, there doesn’t remain a question to be asked about whether P “is” a disease.
I’d like to see the same unpacking applied to the idea of “memetic disease” or “memetic infection” used in this post.
It is good to unpack what we mean by a word when the word confuses us, when despite knowing all the relevant information about a thing, we still aren’t sure if that thing is in the described category. Do you have an example of such a thing that may or may not be a memetic infection or disease? If not, asking to unpack in particular the meaning of “disease” as used technically in this post, just because the word “disease” as commonly used has been excellently unpacked elsewhere, strikes me as cargo cult rationality.
Religion is sometimes considered to be an example of a debated case. Dawkins claims it is a “virus of the mind”—while others emphasise religion’s adaptive aspects. Of course, nobody (in the know) seriously doubts whether it is largely “memetic”, but whether it is “parasitic” is a debated issue.
For a case where the issue is whether someting is memetic or genetic, consider adaptions to language. It is often not clear whether the fit between humans and language is more the result of organic adaptations or cultural adaptations.
Sure, people may argue about whether or not religion is harmful, but that is not the same as agreeing about whether it is harmful and still arguing about whether it is a “disease”.
Harmful human cultural practices are classified as being parasites, competitors or amensalists in memetics. However there are hardly any competitors or amensalists hosted by humans—since most cultural practices need to benefit from their hosts by draining them of resources in order to exist—except for a few memetic hitchhikers.
I think if you deny deleterious cultural practices can usefully be classified as a form of parasitism then you must do so on the basis of some kind of criticism of the memetic framework. As far as I know the technical criticisms of memetics are all bogus. So: the most critics can say is that they don’t like the idea—or that they find it distasteful.