Pity you snipped the headers. James Arthur does make a religion of his politics, and is clearly infested with memes that obscure his grasp of reality, so memes are more important to him than they are to most.
Of course his
"'Memes' are possibly more important than you'd suspect--they're being very consciously, actively deployed by the O-team all over social media, trying to make ideas 'viral.'"
is exactly the sort of silly idea that other people identify as a meme.
I'd call it a delusion.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
Often I see a movie coming on TV or theaters, and I read the summary on wikipedia. That saves a lot of time.
I haven't been to a movie theatre in years. Partly it's the hassle, and partly it's the flood of crappy explosion-filled movies.
I just ordered a new set of my favorite movies on CDs, to leave up at the cabin. 12th Night with Imogen Stubbs and Ben Kingsley; Much Ado about Nothing, the Brannaugh version; Persuasion with Sally Hawkins; Sense and Sensibility with Emma Thompson; a box set of Bogart movies.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc picosecond timing laser drivers and controllers jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
Some of the animated stuff is nice. "The Incredibles", might make my top 100 movies list. I like Holly Hunter's voice.
George H.
Both Shakespeare and Jane Austen are hard to read; I really prefer the plays or movies. After all, Shakespeare is screenplays, meant to be acted. Austen wrote in the very complex, convoluted British manner of her time, which is work to read. Some books are harder than others. I expect that people didn't actually talk that way ca 1800.
Hey, I also have the complete Monte Python, and the complete Rocky and Bulwinkle.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc picosecond timing laser drivers and controllers jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
You and I don't agree about much of anything, barring some fairly narrow technical issues that can be demonstrated mathematically.
However, your equation Meme = "silly idea" is pretty well right AFAICT--maybe "meme=silly idea about silly ideas" would be closer, but that's a fine point.
It's sort of an epistomological equivalent of those guys some years back who made a big splash by developing a method for designing continuous-time filters with z-transforms. ;)
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
-- Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal Consultant ElectroOptical Innovations LLC Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 160 North State Road #203 Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 hobbs at electrooptical dot net http://electrooptical.net
Most memes are silly ideas. But they are replicating packets of pure information, which makes their dynamics fair game for analysis or at least admiration.
Viruses, biological and computer, are packets of information. Some know how to prosper better than others; they have better arrangements of bits inside.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc picosecond timing laser drivers and controllers jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
The analogy with biology would be much closer if the 'memes' preserved their content over N generations, but they don't. If biology were as fashion-driven as popular culture, none of us would be able to interbreed.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
-- Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal Consultant ElectroOptical Innovations LLC Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 160 North State Road #203 Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 hobbs at electrooptical dot net http://electrooptical.net
Doesn't that just mean that memes mutate a bit faster than fruit flies?
Mutation and selection. HIV and shoe styles. Structures that funnel energy.
If biology were as
Well, breeding is falling out of fashion!
Really, I thought Gleick's book was great. The deep concept is that pure information, a certain arrangement of bits, has power. The extreme, stated position is that nothing else matters.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc picosecond timing laser drivers and controllers jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
Since I agree 100%, I can't help recommending these...
The "Jeeves and Wooster" series (with Hugh Laurie). The first episode isn't side-splittingly funny, but the rest is.
Wall-E (speaking of animateds) The Red Violin The Piano A Matter of Life and Death (aka Stairway to Heaven 1946) Master and Commander Pan's Labyrinth Quest for Fire Black Robe
P G Wodehouse may have been the best pure writer in the English language, and A Damsel in Distress was his best book.
The Jeeves TV series was good, but it's a pity that more of his work hasn't been dramatized. The pig books would make a great PBS series.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc picosecond timing laser drivers and controllers jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
Perhaps. But that doesn't stop me thinking that you are one of the limited number people that keeps this group worth sustaining.
This is the difference between a gene and a meme. The arrangement of bits inside a gene is tightly constrained. The internal content of a meme varies widely from one propagator to the next.
James Arthur thinks that the "socialism" that I espouse is the same beast as Bastiat objected to, 165 years ago. "Socialism" has moved on since then, but Bastiat - being dead - hasn't.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
sn't
Terry Prachett did it better. I've claimed here that Terry Prachett does wh at PG.Wodehouse would have done, if Wodehouse had had an education. If John Larkin had had an education (as opposed to exploiting what Tulane offered to further his immediate interests) he might have been able to appreciate P rachett.
I can't say I see it as a loss. Blandings Castle was a stage set where Wode house could run his characters through their comic turns. Austen and Trollo pe get dramatised because they were talking about larger issues.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
I see it mostly on the left. The America left is artsy and passionate, but not very good at math.
A reference to herd immunity--I was sure the punsters here wouldn't miss it.
Possibly not accurate though--these things do seem to influence people over time.
I remember hearing some East Germans say decades ago that of course they didn't believe the propaganda... they "knew" the 100% lies were probably no more than
1% or 2% true. (IOW, it worked.)Cheers, James Arthur
'Meme' seems to mean, generally, 'an idea that goes viral,' and in the instant context, a conscious attempt to propagate a double-think nugget in that fashion, typically with a pseudo-snappy snide slogan, graphic, or both.
E.g. "Republicans hate women," or "women are only paid 72 cents on the dollar compared to men." Both laughably false, both widely repeated as truth.
Bastiat argued mechanisms and principles; they're the same today as ever. Timeless. A wheel's circumference is still pi * D, and a worker will still choose staying home over working--or working less over working more, or learning less over learning more--if you make it worth his while.
Socialism hasn't advanced fundamentally since the disasters 400 years ago on Pilmoth Plantation, Jamestown, etc. reduced productivity enough to starve half those populations. Those dynamics haven't changed either.
A government taking your money, wasting it, then giving you some back (if the King thinks you 'deserve it') is never as efficient as just saving your own money.
And if the government is handing out other people's work (money), at some early point it becomes more profitable to beg, whine, or demand than work.
The main thing that /has/ changed is productivity. The ongoing revolution has increased productivity so much that we can tolerate a much higher parasite load without starving.
A society living on the edge can't survive a 40% tax rate, nor even 10% parasitic load. A super-productive society can, and, under socialism, the parasitic load quickly grows to consume all available resources.
Or more.
Cheers, James Arthur
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ted number people that keeps this group worth sustaining.
but
"Meme" was a deliberate attempt to treat ideas as if they were replicating entities like genes. You may understand it "as an idea that goes viral" whi ch is another sloppy biological analogy, but that's because you don't know much about science, and what you think you know isn't all that reliably cor rect.
Republicans tend not to adopt feminist policies, so you've set up another o f your straw men by overstating what's actually believed.
spells out the reality behind your other strawman claim.
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ts inside a gene is tightly constrained. The internal content of a meme var ies widely from one propagator to the next.
st as Bastiat objected to, 165 years ago. "Socialism" has moved on since th en, but Bastiat - being dead - hasn't.
ll
Bastiat didn't think about educating or training workers, which makes them more productive. It didn't make as much difference in 1850 as it does now.
That wasn't socialism, but communal living - a rather different concept. Yo u do seem to think that your slapping the same name on two very different t hings is enough to win arguments. You also confuse communism and socialism
- a tactic that the communists encouraged, not that it was effective in con cealing the fact that socialism works, while communism eventually fell apar t.
gThat's not socialism either. Socialism is taking some of your money and spe nding some of that on keeping your potential employees health while they ar e growing up, and some more on educating them well during the process.
You make a mint when you hire them as highly skilled, healthy and productiv e employees. It's rather like the government taking some of your money and spending it on roads so that you can ship your products to market more chea ply than you could if you had to have them carried by mules over mule-track s. It's more expensive than road-building, and there hasn't been as much ti me for tax-payers to see the advantage, so antiquarian loons like you are t aking a while to get the point.
early point it becomes more profitable to beg, whine, or demand than work.
That doesn't seem to be the way it works in Scandinavia, or the Netherlands , which had rather fewer beggars (essentially none) when I moved there than I'd gotten used to in Thatcher's Britain.
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The parasitic teaching profession, for a start.
Sweden collects 55% of it's GNP in taxes, and redistributes the money effic iently. It isn't living on the edge - unlike the US it has a positive balan ce of trade, and it's GDP per capita at $60,430 is appreciably higher than the US number at $53,041.
US government debt is being allowed to grow to counteract the damage done b y the GFC. Your "meme" is to deny that stimulus spending can be doing anyth ing useful, so you can't imagine that it's intended to stop as soon as it h as served it's purpose. It makes for great strawman arguments - your rhetor ical specialty - but it does make you look foolish, though you must be used to that by now.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
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Of course you see it mostly on the left. Right wing delusions are your arti cles of faith. The American left may be artsy and passionate, but the one's I've met have been very good at math, whereas you can't understand anthrop ogenic global warming, and think that Monetarism is something more than the reification of an over-simplified mathematical model of the market.
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John Larkin seems to believe what he reads in the Murdoch media - East Germ any isn't the only place that went in for the big lie. You recently told me that there really were weapons of mass destruction in Irak when Dubbya inv aded, citing a New York times article about some mislaid junk form the Irak
-Iran war as if it were evidence that Saddam has stuff to deploy in 2003.
The New York Times article specifically said that it wasn't, but you knew b etter. IOW it worked on you.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
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mited number people that keeps this group worth sustaining.
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g entities like genes. You may understand it "as an idea that goes viral" w hich is another sloppy biological analogy, but that's because you don't kno w much about science, and what you think you know isn't all that reliably c orrect.
of your straw men by overstating what's actually believed.
n-pay/
It might help if you visited our planet.
Here's Hillary telling women they make only 77 cents on the dollar, that it's Republicans' fault, and proof positive that she pays her own female staff 72 cents on the dollar:
Cheers, James Arthur
Oh phooey. We all know you haven't read even a scrap of Bastiat, the very pages would sear your flesh like holy water on a vampire. Why pretend?
If it's in the worker's interest to study, why wouldn't the worker seek out training from his own self interest? If the payoff is so great, why wouldn't he make the investment? Of course he would, and does every day.
That's just as fat-headed and silly. People of yore worked intricate trades with specialized skills that took years to master.
And if you gave them alms they wouldn't bother, as Franklin and others observed.
Meanwhile, society paying to provide PhD-level training in chemistry for someone of every possible advantage of birth and station doesn't seem to have produced any benefit at all--neither in productivity, employment, or taxes paid--nearly a complete loss for all concerned. And, of course, the expense is borne in part by less-advantaged people who valued and would've actually used the training, had the money not been otherwise spent.
Cheers, James Arthur
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