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Humans Are Just Machines for Propagating Memes (Not a good title but an interesting article)
www.wired.com/science/dis...ed_blackmore
Interview at the 2007 TED conference.
"A meme is an idea or thing that is passed from person to person and is either adopted for its usefulness or other purpose -- in some cases becoming a wildly popular idea that can't be stopped -- or abandoned to die a quick and ignoble death. A meme can be a song or snippet of a song, a dance, an urban legend, an expression or behavior, a product brand or even a religion."
www.wired.com/science/dis...ed_blackmore
Interview at the 2007 TED conference.
"A meme is an idea or thing that is passed from person to person and is either adopted for its usefulness or other purpose -- in some cases becoming a wildly popular idea that can't be stopped -- or abandoned to die a quick and ignoble death. A meme can be a song or snippet of a song, a dance, an urban legend, an expression or behavior, a product brand or even a religion."
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Re: Susan Blackmore interview - Wired.com
Mon, March 24, 2008 - 6:05 PMher rhetoric remains as inelegant as it was in her book about memes.
for example, saying free will and consciousness are illusions is not the right rhetorical path to take. it's clever, but doesn't take us very far, and alienates most people. ignoring phenomenology is always a mistake. i know buddhist scholars who do the same thing, mistakingly saying reality is an illusion or not... real!!! i DO get what both blackmore and my friends mean and agree, but it's just a mess to say it this way. not just a bad choice of words, but WRONG. that is, consciousness and even free will are experiences. they are real AS experiences. they are just commonly misunderstood experiences. they are holdovers of the notion of "soul," but perhaps the better route is something along dennett's lines of reclaiming the term "free will" to be compatible with determinism and materialism. his is a strong case for what i'm arguing.
also, the "meme's eye view" is meaningful, but alas, again, making them into agents with humans as non-agents is a clever ruse, perhaps a political act, but really doesn't end up being very intellectually robust. it was a neato trick with genes that got us all thinking, and then we realized that control in itself is a problematic concept, as is causation. a simple inversion won't do the trick.
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Re: Susan Blackmore interview - Wired.com
Tue, March 25, 2008 - 3:13 AMI love her.
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Re: Susan Blackmore interview - Wired.com
Tue, March 25, 2008 - 3:23 PMshe is a pioneer and deserves loads of respect for her work. her book of interviews with people on consciousness as well as her OUP introduction book on consciousness are both fantabulous. "the meme machine" is just very obviously new territory being explored somewhat quickly, tentative, with a lot of speculation. it's a pretty rushed book. i certainly don't have a negative word to say about her personally. you're wanting to have a personal conversation about her, since you've hung out with her, but i haven't, so all i can go on are the three books of hers and interviews and essays i've read. all in all, she's a genius, and i respect her work greatly, and she seems like a life-by-the-horns person.
you're saying "i love her" seems to beg a love/hate relationship somehow, as if she's a celebrity or something to believe in or not... perhaps you have been taken over by the blackmore meme? ; ) -
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Re: Susan Blackmore interview - Wired.com
Thu, March 27, 2008 - 8:43 AM.
I don't always agree with what she says but I love her attitude, and her perseverance and I totally appreciate the paths of rethought that the meme machine originally set off in my mind.
So yeah, I love her. I do hold her in high esteem. If that's "celebrity", ok. I don't have to believe _in_ her, as if her existence needs to be proven.
Whatever, I don't feel like getting into some kind of argument about it.
I read her book, I found a tribe here named after her book, I think it's ok for me to say I think she's awesome and I love her without having to dissect it to death -
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Re: Susan Blackmore interview - Wired.com
Thu, March 27, 2008 - 12:09 PMi'm cool with your lovin her, just thought you weren't cool with my critique of her manner of speaking about these matters. the truth is, her soundbites are probably more effective memetically than my approach. maybe it will get people to think more about their unconscious decision-making! -
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Re: Susan Blackmore interview - Wired.com
Sat, May 10, 2008 - 8:34 AMja- best to avoid the quantum nuh-uh.
BUT- being a survival machine for your genes and memes does not NECESSARILY destroy or invalidate your own "agency." as a generality, it seems die volk most put-off by the idea that they aint completely in the drivers' seat tend to be dominionist cracker-types...
...who haven't had an original thought since potty-training.
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Re: Susan Blackmore interview - Wired.com
Tue, March 25, 2008 - 3:45 PM"Humans Are Just Machines for Propagating Memes (Not a good title but an interesting article) "
you're very right george, the title sucks.
jenny, check out stanovich's interview again. if we can "rebel" against the replicators at all, then we must question the algebra that places us as simply vehicles, in the manner that susan states.
