> To Lior :-
[CLIP]
> My definition of the "runaway compassion" meme is a meme which would result in the
> destruction of the host because it suppresses the memes necessary for survival which
> are of an aggressive and violent nature. Examples of this are anti-abortion
> ("pro-life"), anti-capital punishment, anti-coporal punishment, anti-armament and
> unilateral disarmament. ...
I'd have to discriminate between the anti-abortion meme and the others
empirically. On a myopic individual scale, the anti-abortion meme can
even be altruistic by wishing to oppose a practice known to have a
significant risk of making the woman undergoing the procedure permanently
infertile. [Not that this is a common hook....] The classification
makes sense on medium-term time-scales and higher.
My family history also biases me against abortion, since both my mother
and my father refused to allow the doctors to abort me in 1970. [Roe vs.
Wade [1974] had NO EFFECT on medically necessary abortions, such as the
one my parents refused! It legalized "abortion on whim".]
[CLIP]
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
/ Towards the conversion of data into information....
/
/ Kenneth Boyd
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////