Re: virus: Re: meme pairs (formerly compassion and justice) (formerly AIDS meme)

zaimoni@ksu.edu
Thu, 24 Oct 1996 21:48:54 -0500 (CDT)


On Wed, 23 Oct 1996, Santo Domingo wrote:

> Santo Domingo,
>
> For fun/experimentation, I removed one character per line.
>
> Crime = Justice
> War = Peace
> Poverty = Wealth
> Evil = Good
> Follower = Pagan
>
> --
> David Leeper
>
> **************************
>
> Exactly my point, David. Each is dependant on the other for it's
conceptual existance. Is this significant? Do memes usually come in
pairs of apparent opposites? Or am I just fooling myself with
semantics? (In that it is hard linguistically to have a symbol for "X"
without, by labeling it so, creating the concept of everything else
being "not X".) I seem to recall that set theory deals with this at
length... >

**********

"not X" is usually a much weaker concept than "X", because it requires
more processing power to understand. [See, it even takes longer to type
out.]

Actually, memes seem to come in mutually exclusive sets, claiming to be
exhuastive. The above manipulation is the 'generic' way to create
mutually exclusive sets, but it can break down in strange logics [like
intuitionist, the one that renders the Diamond and Heart Sutras from
Buddhism utterly intelligible.] [Things like this make me wonder if
GURPS' "IOU University" sourcebook was correctly designed when they said
that the Inapplicable Math Department makes Zen Surrealism look concrete.]

[CLIP]

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/ Kenneth Boyd
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