virus: Rational Levels of Material Faith in Truth

Tim Rhodes (proftim@speakeasy.org)
Thu, 18 Feb 1999 23:27:43 -0800

Hey kids, lookie what I found in the archive! Luckily, it doesn't have a damn thing to do with anything that's going on on the list right ow. -Prof. Tim

Re: virus: Altruism, Empathy, the Superorganism, and the Prisoner's Dillema Tim Rhodes (proftim@speakeasy.org)
Fri, 18 Apr 1997 16:14:45 -0700 (PDT)

Messages sorted by: [ date ][ thread ][ subject ][ author ] Next message: Ephraim Golgher: "Re: virus: M&M Evolution" Previous message: Tim Rhodes: "RE: virus: Altruism, Empathy, the Superorganism, and the Prisoner's Dillema" In reply to: D. H. Rosdeitcher: "RE: virus: Altruism, Empathy, the Superorganism, and the Prisoner's Dillema"


On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, Reed Konsler wrote:

> I think this ties into the discussion we were having earlier about the
idea
> of "Consensus Reality". Why didn't it get brought up sooner? I wonder if
> it was becuase we were arguing while denying our baser selves? Perhaps, to
> some extent, each of us was more interested in seeing their "meme" triumph
> over everone elses: To stamp their seal, to evangelize, to infect. It was
> only after we all realized that that wasn't working that we began to pause
> and say:
>
> "Well, alright then...what do YOU think?"
>
> And how many times have you read something and it just "passed through"
> without ever really impacting you? And how many points-of-view or
> interesting ideas do we ignore each day because our mechanisms for
> filtering them out (for instance, by only reading something refering to
you
> specifically) aren't very good?
>
> Object Lesson?

Yes, and a good one. Maybe in future we can ivoke the "Reed Principle" when we start to get too tied up in ourselves and seeing our memes win.

Of course the parties invovled won't be able to see the need of invoking this, so we may need to count on others, not involed in the particular debate, to step in and tell us to chill out. (Yes, Eva, I got this idea from our conversation.)

Can we all agree to step back for a moment and *just listen* when someone invokes the Reed Principle on us?

-Prof. Tim