RE: virus: AIDS Meme

zaimoni@ksu.edu
Wed, 23 Oct 1996 09:56:24 -0500 (CDT)


On Mon, 21 Oct 1996, Hakeeb A. Nandalal wrote:

> 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]

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