Re: virus: Altruism, Empathy, the Superorganism, and the Prisoner's Dillema
Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@calweb.com)
Mon, 21 Apr 1997 17:35:03 -0700 (PDT)
> Robin Faichney wrote:
> >BTW, I'm fairly keen to attach my name to the suggestion
> >that empathy is a prerequisite for memetic transmission,
> >so if any of you entrepreneurial people out there are thinking
> >about passing it off as your own, don't expect to go
> >unchallenged! (Though I don't expect to publish anything
> >soon, I have mentioned it in circles even more prestigious
> >than this one, and I'm archiving all remotely related traffic
> >here.)
>
> Why? What empathy does Coca Cola Schweppes have with me? Coke memes have
> certainly transmitted between that Company and my mind... otherwise I
> wouldn't call Cola "Coke".
Crocker's Law: The quality of an idea is often inversely proportional
to the amount of energy expended in taking credit for it.