>That's precisely what I'm asking: where did they come
>from? Nothing comes out of nothing. Some of the
>ideas that we now view as simply "wrong" were wrong-
>headed even in their own day, but many more were
>genuinely the best guesses that people could make at
>the time. Do you really think that none of the ideas we
>presently view as simply "right" will be disproven in the
>future? That doesn't make it wrong for us to hold these
No, you're right.
>ideas now, and in fact it may be the case that we could
>not develop better ones, without the use of these
>imperfect ones as stepping stones.
Agreed.
>But even regarding those that ideas that are wrong-
>headed at the time: why do wrong-headed ideas come
>to be widely accepted? Because most people are
I think that is a very interesting line of inquiry,
but it only makes sense in the context of there being
some truth to the matter of whether an idea is
wrong-headed or not. I thought I was still trying
to get consensus on that point before moving on to
the more interesting discussions.
>stupid, or because there are psychological and
>sociological factors here worth investigating?
>*Especially* for memeticists, because the spread of
>memes, their acceptance and onward transmission
>for reasons other than their intrinsic rationality, is
>precisely what memetics is all about, is it not?
>
>(Well, not quite what it's *all* about, because when
>someone accepts and retransmits an idea saying
>they do so because it's rational, that falls under
>memetics too -- or do you disagree?)
No, I agree.
>> Actually I don't prefer the physical sciences.
>>
>The reason I suggested you might was because
>you seem, in this context anyway, to have no
>interest in minds, and why they do the things
>they do, only in what's "out there".
No, I am definitely interested in minds. I'm just
trying to get agreement that there exists an "out
there" first. (Richard's last message implied that
there wasn't.)
-- David McFadzean david@lucifer.com Memetic Engineer http://www.lucifer.com/~david/ Church of Virus http://www.lucifer.com/virus/