Re: virus: Virian Tarot

Jason McVean (jmcvean@acs.ucalgary.ca)
Tue, 1 Oct 96 9:52:44 MDT


> Perhaps the purpose of the virian tarot cards would be
> to act as a sort of meme oriented Rorschach test to
> divine (yes, I used that word to be difficult) what memes
> we ourselves have been infected by.

Rorschach... that was the analogy I was groping for when my mind
blanked.

> Not having done my research on the tarot system yet,
> I give an example of a trio (I'm sure it's much more than
> this, but for argument's sake...) Art-Degeneration-Civilization.
> One meme would ask it's host to believe that Art is bringing about
> the Degeneration of Civilization, whereas it's anti-meme would
> have the host thinking Civilization is Degenerating Art.
> Many other memes might also be detected from such a combination.
> Does this do justice to the brain-in-the-black-box idea, where random
> inputs help define the contents of the processor?

I think this could potentially be useful but perhaps not for solo
usage: Would you need to know all (or many of) the possible
interpretations? Or perhaps more importantly, would you need
another person to interpret your interpretations? What I'm
getting at is that one would draw conclusions from how one
interpreted the 3-card combination, but in order to do that, you
would need some objectivity. If you were able to summon that
objectivity, why would you be doing this in the first place? And
would another person bring hir own subjectivity to the equation?
Not that I think this can't be useful... but then again, if one
were able to muster enough introspective power to benefit from
this, would you really need it?

Just playing the bad cop,

Jason

-- 
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Dept. of Physics and Astronomy     University of Calgary         
jmcvean@acs.ucalgary.ca  http://www.ucalgary.ca/~jmcvean
> "I could possibly be fading, or have  something more < 
> to be.  I could feel myself growing colder.  I could <
> feel myself under your feet." Mazzy Star - Into Dust <
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