virus: a tangent
Kirt A. Dankmyer -- aka Loki (dankmyka@wfu.edu)
Mon, 17 Mar 1997 09:14:17 -0500
In talking about alternative thought processes, a thought occurred to me.
Do some memes not, in some cases, create a "memetic immune system", making
the transmission of certain "rival" memes difficult, and/or "encapsulating"
memes so they can do less "harm" to the overall system? When I'm talking of
"encapsulation", I'm thinking of cases like "I know about that, but I don't
believe it" and more sophisticated cases like Saint Thomas Aquinas's
appropriation of Aristotalian thought under a Catholic umbrella. (I guess
the latter would be more like absorption.)
Given that such memetic immune systems exist, how would one construct a
meme to damage the action of the immune system, making someone somewhat
more open-minded? (Mo, this is not a sneaking question about how to
convince Objectivists they're wrong...)
-Loki
--
Kirt A. Dankmyer <dankmyka@wfu.edu> --- Academic Computing Specialist
http://www.wfu.edu/~dankmyka/ -- (910) 759-4202 -- PGP public key available.
For the Snark _was_ a Boojum, you see. --Lewis Carroll