Re: virus: Tabacco mind virus.

Tim Abbott (tmca@cfht.hawaii.edu)
Fri, 1 Aug 1997 21:59:57 -1000 (HST)


> Yeah but thats got no hook, no potential to explode into the
> media and infest a load more hosts. The "if you're dying from tobacco
> then consider killing a tobacco spokesperson" meme has all this.

It's a well known aspect of evolutionary study that it is very difficult
to identify those traits which are survival traits and which are
unsuccessful and doomed to oblivion. I suspect that the same, if not
worse, complexity is true of memes. Killing a tabacco spokesmen
will probably get you a few column inches, 20 seconds on CNN then a
jail cell for the rest of your life. A Pyrrhic victory, at best.
Plus, it'd likely give the smoking industry a martyr to parade.

The tabacco industry are losing already, at least in the western
world, best just to ignore them, join the march quitting the evil
weed and let their meme go extinct.

Cheers,

Tim

-- 
Timothy M. C. Abbott, Ph.D.               http://www.cfht.hawaii.edu/~tmca/
Resident Astronomer                                    tmca@cfht.hawaii.edu
Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope                         Tel: +1 808 885 7944
Box 1597, Kamuela, HI 96743                            Fax: +1 808 885 7288