RE: virus: Faith, Logic and Purpose

David McFadzean (david@lucifer.com)
Wed, 19 Nov 1997 16:34:05 -0700


At 08:26 PM 11/19/97 -0000, Robin Faichney wrote:

>> What do you mean by "meme control"?
>>
>I can see I'm going to have to look at the web
>site again. Assuming you keep it up to date,
>that is! :-) OK, it's slightly loose usage, but
>surely understandable, that I'm talking about
>minimizing infestations by memetic viruses,
>which is what CoV is all about, isn't it?

That wasn't among the list of possible CoV purposes
mentioned a couple weeks ago. Do attach bad connotations
to "memetic viruses"? I mean, are all memes viruses
or just the bad ones?

>Ah, so you *do* know about meme control!
>But I never questioned that -- well, except to
>point out that on a really thorough memetic
>analysis there is no "you" to do the
>controlling, but you agreed with that, so what
>are we arguing about here?

Just the sound of one hand clapping :-)

>> >Don't understand this either. What does
>> >"unrationality" mean?
>>
>> Neither rational nor irrational. It was brought up recently
>> in the <faith> thread to describe a belief held independent
>> of logic.
>>
>OK, so that's down to me skipping. But I'm
>rather dubious about its meaningfulness.
>Does "rational from one POV and irrational
>from another" cover it? If it does, then I

No, because that would subsume all beliefs.

>think "unrational" is a misleading choice of
>words, and if it doesn't, then I can't imagine
>what it could mean.

I think unrational means that it hasn't been categorized
(logically analyzed) or it isn't possible to categorize it.
Any thoughts, Reed?

--
David McFadzean                 david@lucifer.com
Memetic Engineer                http://www.lucifer.com/~david/
Church of Virus                 http://www.lucifer.com/virus/