>>What I mean by world view, is that it is a framework for answering the
big
>>questions asked by all religions, such as: 'how did the world come to
>>exist?',', 'what exists?',
>These are philosophical questions. Although philosophy and religion are
in
>the same phylum, this however should not be confused with they're being
the
>same species.
>>'how should I act?, etc.
>Ahhh! Now this sounds more like a religious question! (But you might
>notice that it is also a question for which Darwinism generally, and
>memetics specificly, offer absolutely no answers at all.)
I'm not saying that if we accept the memetic paradigm then an ethical
system based on evolutionary stable strategies logically follows. I'm only
reporting an observation--a fact--that when memetics gets accepted by a
mind, a meme-complex forms in that mind, which includes a system of ethics
based on evolutionary stable strategies .Are you saying, Tim, that it is
just a coincidence that people into memetics also are interested in ESS's
and use that info to construct a system of ethics?
>>It is possible to
>>take psychoactives and not ponder any of those questions, even though
>>psychoactives can be used for getting answers to those questions.
>And likwise it is possible to study memetics (or cybernetics or natural
>selection or any other such subject) without pondering any of these
>philosophical questions, even though they can be used to guide ones quest
>for the answers to these questions.
Like I just said, when memetics gets accepted, certain kinds of ideas about
those philosophical and religious questions also happen to get accepted.
But, with psychoactives, on the other hand, different people can have
different kinds of meme-complexes while taking the same drugs. And, the
same person can take 2 different LSD trips at different times, and
experience 2 different kinds of meme-complexes,(which are often influenced
by the state of mind at the time of taking the hit.)
>... Or
>perhaps a better question for you, David:
>Why do you, personally, feel that you _need_ so very badly to _have_ an
>"integrated all-encompassing belief system" to find shelter in? So much
so
>that you're willing to construct a new walled city out of the spent shells
>and wasted ammo left over after the barrage which toppled your last
>"all-encompassing belief system".
We have to make a religion out of *something*. Religion is part of the
anatomy of the human psyche. Religion is unavoidable--you can't get rid of
it, you can only replace one with another. Didn't you once admit, Tim, that
your beliefs also make up a system? (And a closed one at that, I might
add!!!)
Also, I didn't use "spent shells and wasted ammo left over" to construct
another belief system. You think that people can take their opponents'
criticisms and use them to construct a new belief system that replaces the
old one. That's not how belief systems work. You have to give people
something new--solid bricks and cement with which to build a new belief
system. That's why CoV usually fails to convert people--they think that an
attacking someone's belief system enough times will turn them into "one of
us".
It wasn't the arguments I had with you, Brodie, and the other CoV'ers
that made me think, "Objectivism sucks, Neo-Darwinism's cool". What
happened was, Lee Crocker, who used to post to virus, would write these
integrated posts that explained parts of the Neo-Darwinian framework and
he'd juxtapose the Neo-Darwinian ideas with the "pop-rationist" ideas to
which many people subscribe. I thought, "This guy makes sense and he uses
another system--a different one from mine. (ie. he knows the
Randian-oriented system I used, but prefers a different one.) Gee, maybe
there's some better ideas out there that are worth investigating.". After
studying guys like Karl Popper, (who, BTW, is the one who gave Dawkins [who
coined the word, 'meme'], the concept of the meme)Charles Peirce, and
others, it was then easy to dump one idea system for another.
You can't expect anyone's beliefs to change unless you give them a new
system first. Look what happened with that Mormon who was on CoV several
weeks ago. Did he change his beliefs? And what about when we (Prof. Tim and
I) were on the Neo-Tech mailing list, bashing the Neo-Techers' ideology. It
didn't matter if our arguments were better--as far as most of them were
concerned, "NT rocks and that's all you need to know!"
BTW, there's one thing I could say for the NT writers: Maybe they were
running a cult, selling people a closed belief system. But at least they
understand something that the CoV'ers don't: that to change people's minds
with new memes, you have to *market* those memes--sell them on an
integrated system of ideas.
And, BTW, there are memes about marketing that are part of the
neo-Darwinian meme-complex. One is "Don't close the sale--just keep the
offer open." Another is "you can't control whether the customer says yes or
no, but you can control whether you ask a 'yes or no' question. Do you
agree with these memes, Tim? According to my theory, you would.
>>Of course you can make a religion of anything...
>..if you feel you need to. But do you really feel that way?
Yes. And so do you, Tim!
--David R.