I actually think this post could be improved a lot – the examples feel a bit weird. I didn’t actually understand the intent of the PS5 example, and I think I agree with another commenter that something about the Toxoplasma example feels off.
Nonetheless, this concept has been pretty important to my thinking in recent weeks. I think being able to taboo moral language and focus on explicit gears is a key skill.
Regarding the toxoplasma example: it sounds like some people have different mental images associated with toxoplasmas than I do. For me, it’s “that virus that hijacks rat brains to remove their fear response and be attracted to cat-smell”. The most interesting thing about it, in my head, is that study which found that it does something similar in humans, and in fact a large chunk of cat-owners have evidence of toxoplasma hijack in their brains. That makes it a remarkably wonderful analogy for a meme.
It sounds like some other people associate it mainly with cat poop (and therefore the main reaction is “gross!”).
Anyway, I agree the post could be improved a lot, and I’d really like to find more/better examples. The main difficulty is finding examples which aren’t highly specific to one person.
Curated.
I actually think this post could be improved a lot – the examples feel a bit weird. I didn’t actually understand the intent of the PS5 example, and I think I agree with another commenter that something about the Toxoplasma example feels off.
Nonetheless, this concept has been pretty important to my thinking in recent weeks. I think being able to taboo moral language and focus on explicit gears is a key skill.
Regarding the toxoplasma example: it sounds like some people have different mental images associated with toxoplasmas than I do. For me, it’s “that virus that hijacks rat brains to remove their fear response and be attracted to cat-smell”. The most interesting thing about it, in my head, is that study which found that it does something similar in humans, and in fact a large chunk of cat-owners have evidence of toxoplasma hijack in their brains. That makes it a remarkably wonderful analogy for a meme.
It sounds like some other people associate it mainly with cat poop (and therefore the main reaction is “gross!”).
Anyway, I agree the post could be improved a lot, and I’d really like to find more/better examples. The main difficulty is finding examples which aren’t highly specific to one person.
Protozoa, not virus.