Memes and "Temes"

[BMcGilly07]

The below regards the video, "Susan Blackmore: Memes and 'temes'", which Kevin Solway has made available on TheAbsolute TV (to be found here http://www.theabsolute.net/tv/?p=163)

While the perspective offered by memetics can be enlightening, her idea that memes and now "temes" are copied from person to person, if they can, regardless of consequence allows for a woefully inadequate take on the whole human situation. The very idea that information is copied "if it can, regardless of consequences" is already personifying. A more truthful observation would be that no one knows each reason for why people do what they do, and never over the entire broad history and spectrum of society and mankind can a more significant factor for imitation than the ego be found. This goes for memes and 'temes'.


She is simply noticing the role of unconsciousness and specializing and personifying information. Thereby somehow having information and now technology granted godlike powers to run rampant at some sort of internal, primeval whim of its own.

She is making a science out of unconsciousness and especially humans desire to find design and patterns in the world around him. To hold such a perspective as hers as a revelation or rather to maintain such a perspective and to continue to plumb its depths and milk it for all of its implications is really to, in a surreptitious way personify those things which humans create in order to add more playthings to the world, to try to offer zircon to Indira's web to make the unconscious of the world a little deeper.

Hers is the view of a sociologist. Bound to surveying the masses she could not approximate a more human reason for memes and temes than unconsciousness because as unfortunate as it is, by doing so she has brought the human individual, the ego, back into her field- and brought it back as an unconscious force on HUMANS!! The ultimate no-no of the egalitarian in the sociologist and her numbers. Hers is a deeper sin than she realizes. YES genes will replicate at any given chance, but not regardless of the consequences but because there's something deep inside of this helical molecule which is driven TO BE. By granting that same drive to imitations, be they memetic or technological, the hand that guides and the hand that covets is man's own. Truth is the anti-meme. Once Truth becomes a meme it is no longer truth, it is religion. Once a wise robot is created, what will be of temes? Who would possibly want one of those? Would he want another of himself?

[Kevin Solway]

The very idea that information is copied "if it can, regardless of consequences" is already personifying. A more truthful observation would be that no one knows each reason for why people do what they do, and never over the entire broad history and spectrum of society and mankind can a more significant factor for imitation than the ego be found. This goes for memes and 'temes'.

Some things "catch-on" at the expense of other things. It may be that wisdom, which is a meme, catches on at the expense of the human race. Or it may be that our machines ("temes") catch-on, or reproduce, at the expense of the human race.

I don't think she's saying any more than that.

She is simply noticing the role of unconsciousness and specializing and personifying information. Thereby somehow having information and now technology granted godlike powers to run rampant at some sort of internal, primeval whim of its own.

Not necessarily. Her "personifying" language may only be used as a means of expression. It's not meant to be taken literally.

there's something deep inside of this helical molecule which is driven TO BE.

Not really. You may now be personifyng DNA.

It's only a matter of chance that DNA continues to exist on this planet.

For example, take a cup resting on the table where I'm sitting. It may have been designed to be an "unbreakable" cup. Yet if I knock it off the table with my elbow, onto a hard floor, it will probably break.

That's what DNA is like.

Truth is the anti-meme. Once Truth becomes a meme it is no longer truth, it is religion.

Wisdom, or consciousness, is a meme, is it not? Is it not catching? Is it not addictive? Does it not arrive at your doorstep without any conscious effort on your part?

I like what Susan Blackmore is doing. It's a very difficult subject to think about, and there is a lot of opposition to it. It may drive her insane - I hope not.

[Ataraxia]

Truth is the anti-meme. Once Truth becomes a meme it is no longer truth, it is religion.

Wisdom, or consciousness, is a meme, is it not? Is it not catching? Is it not addictive? Does it not arrive at your doorstep without any conscious effort on your part?

That was pretty much Dennet's argument in another of your Vids--which I agree with.

I like what Susan Blackmore is doing. It's a very difficult subject to think about, and there is a lot of opposition to it. It may drive her insane - I hope not.

She does seem to be out there on the edge.Good stuff really, even if most/any of it ends up being misguided.