Re: virus: Re: your mail

David McFadzean (dbm@merak.com)
Thu, 3 Aug 1995 10:42:09 -0600


At 10:25 AM 8/3/95 -0600, Anders Sandberg wrote:

>What I have been thinking of is a meta-meme, loosely based on the
>Prisoners Dilemma and Brin's essay about memes. It goes roughly like
>this: "Accept the presence of all belief systems which accept your
>presence", essentially a meme of tolerance. Hosts with this meme would
>have reason to defend themselves together against all hosts who do not
>accept it (or groups with the meme but incompatible beliefs), a distinct
>advantage since it both provides protection, an internal memetic ecology
>for other memes to spread and moves the conflict to the meta-meme level
>instead (where there is presumably less competition).
>
>What do you think?

I think the meta-meme has a lot of merit from a game theoretic perspective
(as you alluded to by your mention of the Prisoners Dilemma). Tolerating
other complexes that tolerate you is analogous to cooperating on the
first move. Still (if I may anthropomorphize a bit), I wonder if there
are any other religions that would tolerate Virus if they really knew
about it.

--
David McFadzean                 dbm@merak.com
Memetic Engineer                http://www.merak.com/~dbm/
Merak Projects Ltd.