[HN Gopher] Are you hosting a memetic parasite?
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Are you hosting a memetic parasite?
Author : monort
Score : 67 points
Date : 2021-03-19 06:54 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (apxhard.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (apxhard.com)
| visarga wrote:
| > One answer would be that "I care about the world and when I see
| things that are wrong I get upset, which is good and reasonable."
| But that's the parasite speaking.
|
| I think it's a social mechanism to weed out traitors. It's a
| necessary part of the process, not just a parasite meme.
| jsmith99 wrote:
| Not working for me, try
| https://archive.is/20210319065509/https://apxhard.com/2021/0...
|
| I recommend the Web Archives Firefox extension by the way. Useful
| not just for archive.is but also for e.g. Google cache (googlebot
| is often allowed pass paywalls).
| renewiltord wrote:
| Thank you for the link and extension recommendation.
| totetsu wrote:
| It's easy to get caught up in information flows, and assess how
| the state of the world aligns with your values. It's much harder
| to propagate your values into the world. Just worrying sometimes
| feels like you're doing something, when you're not. It's a shame
| that most of us are so disempowered that tuning out is probably
| the best option for our individual wellbeing. I realised Social
| media was a memetic parasite right from the start when I could
| feel the urge to take a photo of something, rather than just
| enjoy it rising in my consciousness.
| jamesgreenleaf wrote:
| That was a wonderful article, and an important concept from
| someone who found wisdom through suffering.
|
| The central idea reminds me of the quote by Jung:
|
| "People don't have ideas; ideas have people."
|
| It's pithy, and maybe not entirely true, but it's something we
| see every day, and can all resonate with.
| omginternets wrote:
| I guess we'll never know :(
| [deleted]
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Google Cache:
| https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Yo3J8V...
| smarx007 wrote:
| Connection refused is likely that the site was "nullrouted"
| (not really, but don't have a better term) by a hosting
| provider after HN hug and not crumbled under load itself
| (usually you experience very long response times, which would
| then often be a 5xx error). Wall of shame:
| https://www.whoishostingthis.com/#search=apxhard.com
| (Dreamhost).
| tomgp wrote:
| I agree with much of this article. I looked at the twitter output
| of an acquaintance a couple of days back and after literally 60
| seconds I felt my mind becoming a stew of frustraion and anxiety
| -- i agreed with many of the points and retweets and slogans but
| to what end? On the other hand I'm dubious of effective altruism
| as a model for improving the world it seems to me it has very
| little chance of creating necessary structural change. Charitable
| giving is great but why as a society should we be subject to the
| whims of individual philanthropists -- often gross benneficiaries
| exisiting power structures.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I dont really believe the altruism model will work myself, at
| least with our current society and the power memes have over
| people.
|
| CGP Grey's, This video will make you angry really gives a lot
| of insight into the nearly biological nature of memes and the
| selection process that goes into the ones that we end up
| seeing.
|
| https://youtu.be/rE3j_RHkqJc
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| > why as a society should we be subject to the whims of
| individual philanthropists
|
| Well, what do the alternatives look like? It's not like
| powerful politicians _aren 't_ self-aggrandizing; I'm sure many
| of them would like to effect structural change, but the
| structural change they want is probably pretty suspect. Nor is
| it the case that "political majorities", writ large, have an
| untarnished reputation for gentleness and decency.
| kubanczyk wrote:
| > as a society should we be subject to the whims of individual
| philanthropists
|
| As a society we can be changed by individual people. I would
| prefer to retain that, yes.
| chordalkeyboard wrote:
| > Charitable giving is great but why as a society should we be
| subject to the whims of individual philanthropists -- often
| gross benneficiaries exisiting power structures.
|
| This is an interesting framing. What form of social
| organization would make it so that altruistic behavior was not
| a result of the whims of people in extant power structures? It
| seems tautologous that if someone has the power to allocate
| funds, they are the current beneficiary of the extant power
| structure.
| [deleted]
| blfr wrote:
| What surprises me about habits like watching news or scrolling
| Facebook is that people don't get bored by it. Because this is
| our failsafe mechanism for not falling into repetitive loops.
|
| And I get the appeal of most of these things. When I was an
| adolescent I had this or other 24h info network on most of the
| time on a tv in my room. I spent nights arguing with people on
| Usenet.
|
| But after a few months or maybe a year or two, I would get bored
| with them. Yet people can keep going for decades. Why is their
| memetic immune system not firing up?
| hirundo wrote:
| Those who are alive have genes that have survived billions of
| generations due to our ancestors' habitual vigilance for
| predators, prey and mates. We are hardwired to scan the world
| for those, whatever the channel. Our predecessors who got bored
| too quickly by massively repetitive scenery were less likely to
| become our ancestors.
| archduck wrote:
| Tell that to all the descendants of Genghis Khan....
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Casual social interaction argumentative or otherwise is
| natural. I mean it's not like we're by nature solitary animals
| who sit in our rooms and ponder the mysteries of the universe
| for ten hours. That's just a nerdy hobby of a minority of
| people who write blogs like that.
|
| Every day when I go to work (pre-covid anyway) I used to chat
| with the middle-aged lady living next door and we'd talk about
| the weather or the news or whatever, and there's nothing new
| about it but it's enjoyable. I've heard someone argue it's like
| a low-key reality check, sort of like people pinging each other
| checking if everything's still in tune.
|
| Not too long ago we used to congregate in large communities and
| extended families for much of the day, and for the last few
| decades we've locked ourselves in cubicles and single family
| homes. My grandmother had 8 siblings and three generations
| living in one home, there was always something to talk about or
| get in a fight with. It's no wonder most people are yearning
| for a sort of casual background chat.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Interesting model. I have found the meme model a useful thing in
| the past but have not distinguished things except by their
| transmissibility and energy consumption. The meme parasite model
| is an interesting way to distinguish "harmful" memes from good
| ones.
|
| Currently, I suspect parasitic memes have lots of room to
| flourish because we keep people alive who are hosts. There is
| very little selection pressure.
|
| But that is because we are in a time of unbelievable prosperity,
| a Stable Era. I believe that as other countries catch up, we will
| enter a Chaotic Era. The real pressures will pop up then and
| either a massive gap will yawn between those with many meme
| parasites or the ones with meme parasites will follow their
| directive to eat those without.
|
| Not to sound like an accelerationist but since I'd prefer that
| parasitic memes die out, I hope that the chaos comes fast, so
| that even if I am heavily infected the coming purge wipes me so
| that Clean Humanity may survive. If we wait too long, too many of
| us may be infected, and we may win but doom us all to a local
| optimum.
|
| And as Toby Ord argues in _The Precipice_ , that would be a
| terrible end.
| mattkevan wrote:
| Good satire!
| foobarbecue wrote:
| There is no antimemetics division.
| coderzach wrote:
| I've been feeling very paranoid about posting ANYTHING online,
| honestly. Or chat, email, video call, etc. Is that what we're
| talking about?
| MrRadar wrote:
| It's a reference to this: http://scp-
| wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub _There Is No
| Antimemetics Division_ and its sequel _Five Five Five Five
| Five_ are some of the best sci-fi stories I 've ever read.
| coderzach wrote:
| haha, that's not a visual programming language!
| omginternets wrote:
| I'm really enjoying this. Thanks for posting it!
| joshschreuder wrote:
| There's some really great SCPs on there, I go through the
| top rated ones every few months. Some very creative and
| well thought out pieces.
|
| I have a feeling like the developers of Control (the
| video game) were heavily influenced by SCPs.
| omginternets wrote:
| Huh I'm not familiar with that game. Gonna check this
| out.
|
| Edit: ok, just checked out the Wikipedia page. You will
| be happy to learn that it is directly inspired by SCP.
| joshschreuder wrote:
| It's a great game, really hit that X-Files / Fringe vibe
| that has been largely missing from a lot of media in the
| last decade or so.
| [deleted]
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Gad Saad, professor of evolutionary psychology, recently wrote a
| book called "The Parasitic Mind", that develops a similar set of
| ideas: https://bookshop.org/books/the-parasitic-mind-how-
| infectious...
|
| Saad also appeared on the Jordan Peterson podcast recently,
| explaining his framing and terminology around ideas infecting
| minds: https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/podcast/gadsaad/
| archduck wrote:
| > More intelligent people can play host to far more sophisticated
| parasitic memes. Educated adults are less likely to believe that
| lizard people rule the world
|
| There's evidence that highly educated people are _more_ likely to
| believe in the Qanon conspiracy.
|
| Belief isn't just shorthand for "checking out the evidence and
| making claims about the world on the basis of the probability of
| that evidence." There can be a will to believe whatever supports
| your social or material interests that trumps reason. We are now
| living in post-epistemological times.
|
| Interestingly, at the end of the article he brings up pro
| wrestling and remarks on not believing it anymore. But this kind
| of credulity is almost the opposite of what pro wrestling is all
| about - you have to buy in to take part (kayfabe). Everyone does,
| everyone knows it.
| exo-pla-net wrote:
| What's your source that more educated people are more prone to
| buying into Qanon?
| archduck wrote:
| The original source is over a hundred pages of polling data,
| so I won't link to that.
|
| https://m.slashdot.org/story/381628
| exo-pla-net wrote:
| They aren't scientists. And their conclusion is not just
| false; it's the opposite.
|
| If you have a college education, you're proportionally
| _much more_ likely to have a "very unfavorable" view of
| QAnon. (26% with no college degrees, versus ~42% with
| college or higher).
|
| How did the journalists get it wrong?
|
| 1) They fixated on a poorly worded polling question: "How
| accurate or inaccurate are the claims made by QAnon?" (I
| myself believe that QAnon's claims are "somewhat accurate",
| in a similar way that I notice that broken clocks are
| correct twice per day.)
|
| 2) They failed to notice that non-college-educated people
| overwhelmingly account for people who are "unaware" of
| QAnon. It could be inferred that education correlates with
| worldly awareness, and hence the _ability_ to have opinions
| on obscure topics.
|
| In conclusion, don't trust popular press. Journalists lack
| the analytical skill and incentives to accurately report on
| science, much less on raw data. https://xkcd.com/882/
| [deleted]
| andreskytt wrote:
| Observe, that today memes do not require the host to be alive.
| One could boast of a diet on YouTube, die of it a few days in and
| the videos would happily live on.
| phreeza wrote:
| In your example at least the recipient is alive, but in fact I
| wonder if one could argue that with machine learning models
| training on web data, a meme can now perform an entire
| reproductive cycle without a human in the loop.
| pixl97 wrote:
| If not now, in the future yes. I believe I've discussed just
| that possibly on HN. The creation of a virtual social media
| around a person that drives them to extreme or insane
| positions. Just imagine a set of bots that gives a very
| positive response to oddly coloured cats. At first you post
| 'normal' cats with odd patterns, but then then you find that
| unnaturally coloured cats get an even better response. Could
| we actually see a person dying their white cat cyan for fake
| internet responses and positive affirmations that are
| completely disconnected from human reality? I believe yes,
| and that its probably already happened.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| The host is the culture, not any one individual.
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| The videos age as well though. They aren't necessarily always
| in their prime, so its impact does tend to get reduced over
| time. so not " _happily_ living on ".
| PeterisP wrote:
| They may as well grow in popularity over time as they get
| shared and liked and pushed to others by recommender
| algorithms.
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| I did think about that, in the scenario described by TP, I
| am putting faith that the claims made by a popular
| lifestyle video will be scrutinized and thus debunked.
| qubex wrote:
| Oh yes, the high level of discourse in the YouTube
| Comments section. ;)
| [deleted]
| m463 wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210320221007/https://apxhard.c...
| [deleted]
| mikewarot wrote:
| What about the other parasite, M0?
|
| https://www.datapacrat.com/Opinion/Reciprocality/r1/index.ht...
| Nemrod67 wrote:
| To go with that, The Ghost Not is maybe easier to grasp
|
| https://www.datapacrat.com/Opinion/Reciprocality/r2/index.ht...
| staticman2 wrote:
| I don't believe (hardly) anyone in academia uses the term meme.
| Perhaps there's a good reason for that?
|
| It's not clear any clarity is added to the world by replacing the
| term for culture or thoughts with whatever the term meme is
| trying to accomplish.
| turblety wrote:
| You know, meme was originally coined [1] by Richard Dawkins, an
| academic scientist, in his book The Selfish Gene.
|
| 1. https://books.google.com/books?id=WkHO9HI7koEC&pg=PA192
| staticman2 wrote:
| That's why I said "hardly" anyone uses it, not nobody uses
| it.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| The Selfish Gene is a popular text by an academic
| articulating a very specific view of evolution, one that's
| caught on among a certain subculture but which isn't
| mainstream as far as I can tell.
|
| Plenty of terms originally coined by academics lack broad
| academic or even intellectual credibility. I'd agree with the
| OP that the use of "Meme" is one. I'd also agree that this is
| because the term provides no clarity - ideas aren't like
| genes. Genes reproduce by a set mechanism, ideas can be
| stretched and modified any way you want. Genes are
| interpreted and realized by a fairly set mechanism. Ideas can
| be realized any old way. The "Meme" concept is one person's
| bad analogy imo.
| xtiansimon wrote:
| "The Selfish Gene is a popular text ... among a certain
| subculture but which isn't mainstream as far as I can
| tell."
|
| "broad academic or even intellectual credibility"
|
| I see what you did there.
|
| I don't see a problem with memetics being non-mainstream in
| the way it's described here. Sure. If you want a job doing
| something called _memetics_. If you want to gain clout and
| respectability among your peers for illuminating some dark
| corner of the worlds problems with your writing, memetics
| is not going to impress anyone.
|
| I say, More ideas the better!
| exo-pla-net wrote:
| The word "meme" was invented by evolutionary biologist Richard
| Dawkins. He's public facing, but his origins are academic. The
| word caught on because it's a good word that conveyed a novel
| idea. One could say that it memed its way into our hearts.
| [deleted]
| Ensorceled wrote:
| What do you think the word meme means[1]? What academic word or
| phrase should replace it?
|
| [1]https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/meme
| staticman2 wrote:
| The dictionary definition suggests "idea" would do fine.
|
| If you took the article and replaced meme with idea would
| anything be lost?
| Ensorceled wrote:
| The entire concept of viral replication.
| staticman2 wrote:
| Here's a sentence from the article with meme replaced
| with idea "One perhaps non-obvious consequence of seeing
| ideas as organisms is the concept of a idea parasites."
|
| This seems to work fine.
|
| Whether insight comes from calling an idea an organism is
| another issue, I suspect it's a poor metaphor.
| rarefied_tomato wrote:
| It seems sufficient to acknowledge that virality is a
| property of ideas. We can then continue using a single
| term to reference the notion of an 'idea'.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| "semiotics", which predates it in depth and knowledge by some
| years.
| xtiansimon wrote:
| !!! That's a very unusual application of 'semiotics'.
|
| I would be very grateful to ANYONE who could produce a
| reference to a published paper or text describing both
| memetics and semiotics in culture.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| Meme is just I Can Haz Sign.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme
|
| _Another critique comes from semiotic theorists such as
| Terrence Deacon[41] and Kalevi Kull.[42] This view
| regards the concept of "meme" as a primitivized concept
| of "sign"._
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Memes are arguably topics of semiotics, but the mere
| existence of the word "semiotics" doesn't mean we don't
| still need "meme". "Memetics" would properly be identified
| as semiotics, or at least a not-particularly-distinct
| subfield thereof.
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