I look at it more like anti-pollution laws. Not to save people from
themselves, but to make the shared environment more pleasant. It is
ignorant
to think that absence of regulation will produce the most desirable
society.
That is a simple-minded, irrational belief that people harbor
because it is
easier to think simple-minded thoughts than to live with the
dissonance of
the complexity of reality.
Richard Brodie richard@brodietech.com
http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/
Author, "Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme"
http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/votm.htm
Free newsletter! Visit Meme Central at
http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/meme.htm
> This is an interesting point ... the validity of your analogy seems rooted
> in how objective "meme space" is. When we mess up the environment we are
> disturbing/influencing ecological processes. The costs of not protecting
> the environment are deeper then the aesthetics of not being able to see a
> spotted owl or whatever ... It would take me a half a day to trace the
> cause and effect back to increased health risks, but I think in this venue
> we can all agree that environmental protection is a good thing.
>
> What are the costs of protecting our memetic environment? My problem with
> this is that it causes cultural isolation ... and thus leaves the culture
> vulnerable to similar attacks from other venues. I can see a tie between
> limiting the speech of tobacco companies and the war on drugs. In both
> cases you are criminalizing behavior that is ultimately an individual's
> decision. This criminalization engenders a bureaucracy that then
> naturally tries to grow itself. First we limit tobacco's right to
> advertise ... then what? Fast food's right to advertise? Gas Hog's right
> to advertise. The ad busters organization you have referred to before
> would argue that advertising itself is an evil thing. How do we
> differentiate between information and manipulation?
>
> Closer to home for you I just got back from a Microsoft course ...
> Mastering Visual Studio 6.0. Throughout the course there were
> manipulations of reality by making statements that were only half truths.
> My favorite was that if you take advantage of Visual Studio 6.0 you no
> longer have to worry about what browser your user's are running ...
> Because if you take advantage of Visual Studio 6.0 the components etc.
> your web pages will ONLY WORK ON MICROSOFT PRODUCTS!. I see this as no
> different then tobacco ads saying that smoking is cool. I AM COOLER WHEN
> I SMOKE BECAUSE I'M TAKING A DRUG THAT SIMULTANEOUSLY STIMULATES ME AND
> MAKES ME FEEL RELAXED. Do I wish that I had developed other coping
> mechanisms for dealing with social anxieties and frustrations?
> ABSOLUTELY. Are the tobacco ads lies? Not really. Nicotine is a decent
> drug ... but the benefits probably don't out weigh the long term effects.
> (I say probably because its hard for me to say if I would be better off as
> a non-smoker. If I could say that absolutely I would quit in a heart
> beat. During the umpteen times I've tried to quit I always decide I'd
> rather be killing myself slowly then putting up with the frustrations that
> smoking helps me deal with. Is that STUPID ... yes ... but I see no way
> to get around it.)
>
> My take on this in microcosm is the stories of Concentration Camp
> Prisoners and POWs who would trade food for tobacco. To a non-smoker this
> is certainly non-sensical, and from a natural selection P.O.V. these
> people as a class certainly paid a price for their addiction .... but to
> say that the decision is not rational is to arbitrarily make a value
> judgement that is severely debilitating to society in the long run. The
> first value judgement is not debilitating ... but it becomes the basis for
> others until ultimately we have the Meme Police constantly telling us what
> we're allowed to expose ourselves to. IMHO the answer is to make an
> objective study of the health costs of smoking ... and then tax tobacco to
> subsidize those costs. Afterwards leave it up to the individual to
> decide. Same goes for the war on drugs, drinking and driving, seatbelts,
> fuel prices, blah de blah de blah.
>
>