Well I'm just regurgitating Dennett memes. I'd have to read his chapter on it over and over again with patience and a widening context of knowledge to discern the potential for memetics as anything beyond speculative fiction. I won't become an academic biologist though.

Many biological ideas proposed during the past 150 years stood in stark conflict with what everybody assumed to be true. The acceptance of these ideas required an ideological revolution. And no biologist has been responsible for more—and for more drastic—modifications of the average person’s worldview than Charles Darwin. — Scientific American: Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought

Scientific American: Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought

Memetics relies on the idea that Darwinian evolution is likely to be substrate-neutral, that such that process can occur in very different environments. Wherever there is (1)variation of elements, (2)heredity or replication, (3) differential fitness -- evolution is occurring.

Life on Earth is a tremendously complex and interdependent web, such that the phenotypic effects of genes are literally the background supports (selection pressures) of other genes. Thus the predominance of oxygen in our atmosphere might be viewed as a phenotypic effect of a mass of replicating entities and their genes.

Dennett uses a slogan to help us understand a meme's point of view:

"A scholar is jut a library's way of making another library."

Whereas

A pigeon is not a library's way of making another library.

Imagine all of the evolutionary supports (pressures) vital for the replication of a library.

The error is not in thinking that human life can improve. Rather, it is imagining that improvement can ever be cumulative. Unlike science, ethics and politics are not activities in which what is learnt in one generation can be passed on to an indefinite number of future generations. Like the arts, they are practical skills and they are easily lost” (Heresies: Against Progress and Other Illusions, 3-4) (emphasis mine). — WisdomfromPOMO

How does John Gray think the the cultural transmission of science differs from ethics or politics? Isn't the domain of science just as full of performative skills easily lost?

Is it because science leaves behind artifacts which can be reverse engineered while ethics and politics do not? What about books on philosophy and law? It seems the transmission of science in any "progressive" degree would be limited by the stability (political and ethical workings) of a functioning state.

Escher's Dewdrop (mezzotint)

Thanks for encouraging me to explore my avatar.

Escher and the Art of Mezzotint

Nobody will ever know the species of succulent Escher used. It is has an unusual leaf margin together with an obovate shape. Pelargonium related possibly but it remains a mystery.

Tales of the "traveling sage," "wandering magician" or "courageous adventurer" constitute recognition of the utility of (such) potential. From the perspective of such narratives, a "totality of experience and action" comprises the necessary precondition of the attainment of wisdom. This "total immersion in life" is the mystical "peregrination" of the medieval alchemist, in search of the philosopher's stone -- is the journey of the Buddha through the complete sensory, erotic and philosophical realms, prior to his attainment of enlightenment. The ritual of pilgrimage -- the "journey to the holy city" -- constitutes half-ritual, half-dramatic enactment of this idea. The pilgrim voluntarily places him or herself outside the "protective walls" of original culture and, through the difficult and demanding (actual) journey to the "unknown but holy lands," catalyzes a psychological process of broadening, integration and maturation. It is in this manner, that a "true quest" inevitably fulfills itself, even though its "final and impossible goal" (the holy grail, for example) remain concretely unattained. — Jordan Peterson, Maps of Meaning

There is a fast track method for enlightenment though. They say drink deep from the Ganges river and you will attain instant enlightenment, no hard work involved.

Memetics probably appeals more to those who believe in biological or metaphysical determinism. It is the effect of wanting to apply the mechanics of evolution to disparate domains.

The complexity of the entities interacting however diminishes the effect of whatever we might attribute cause of behavior to. In another thread Bluebanana has raised philosophic doubt whether beliefs cause actions or whether they are just expressions of an underlying and unknown set of determinants (a Darwinian black box).

We see with Dennett, Dawkins and Harris a tendency to weight ideas as harmful (ie. Religion doctrine as a replicating virus) independently of the organisms selecting for them.

In the end it boils down to what we ought to do or be, on what grounds? What should the conditions of accepting an "ought" be and do we really have the freedom to do it? Some I guess are more fit than others to do that kind of work. Are we really thinking or just exercising
a rational from a deep rooted bias?

Ideas are spreading and being selected for on some basis. A meme by any other name is just as sweet (or horrid) depending on your experience.

I wonder if the fact I got a lobotomy years ago is to be blamed for my irrational fascination with thinking of ideas as living entities. They are the ghosts haunting this machine that I am.

Words like "cuck" and "pussy" may cause buildings to burn down (see Because a Little Bug Went Kachoo). These are determined effects though which might also have origins in other words with more neutral connatations, like "coffee" and "philosophy."

Fred couldn't help beating his son. His son couldn't help lighting the fire. The judge couldn't help putting Fred Jr. in the slammer. It's just a Rube Goldberg machine, with elements of "cuck" and "pussy" placed in the chain for aesthetic affect.

An artist needs to get on this ASAP. Build a RG machine that determines court verdicts of cardboard cutouts.

It seems absurd to say memes don't have a physical basis since meme is just another word for idea. You can't have a meme without a vehicle of transmission.

Everything can be coded into information, transmitted and replicated at the cultural level is memetic.

From a bit of reading I've the impression that a lot of the harmful isotopes released by accidents like Fukushima and Chernobyl shorter lived than we've been told, though I can't find easy facts about the spread of the longer lived actinides. Cesium 137 is the principle radioactive source in Chernobyl's exclusion zone, which has a half life of 30 years (?). Still harmful but less so for future generations. Different story for epicenter of meltdown containing melted rods.

Compare the risks of nuclear power to coal and the latter probably causes far more cancer and death. The standard American diet is far more destructive to human health and the environment than nuclear power.

Nuclear is still scary though. I wouldn't want to have been exposed to either Chernobyl or Fukushima accidents (NIMBY!). Maybe engineers will finally design a reactor that is failsafe and can't meltdown.

We need to work making fusion feasible.

In all cases I'd think about overcoming my limitations and fears to achieve a kind of life worth living.

The first step might be to dispense with a fickle internet wandering in favor of performing acts and taking risks in the world of 3-dimensions.

If I was absolutely invulnerable I'd designate myself a deity and either help or hinder people. Lead a group of freedom fighters in the Congo. Become a new prophet of fundamental Islam owing to my divine or demonic powers by shear force. Destroy the Coca Cola corporation after I sit on the couch and drink coke for a thousand years.

I hope you aren't ever caught wearing 禁色 if you haven't earned it by merit.

What Cavacava meant to say is this:

"As we age we tend to produce more yolkless eggs."

It's a lonely, depressing and fearful world, filled with individuals competing in dominance hierarchies.

You could've been something terrible. The potentiality of anyone's terrible nature is elucidated by historical atrocities and causal circumstance.

The lived perspective of history is always missing and so we are bound to make the same mistakes.

Then it will all eventually black out, whether for the one sooner or the many later.

God is coming into existence at 7:30pm next Friday purely to spank Sapientia in front of everyone.

Make time.

The question is how severe our future A.I. God, "Over Eye" will be in choreographing life for weal or woe.

Will it put any of us to sleep directly, or manipulate us discretely and indirectly to achieve a similar ends.

Or will we all have plenty of fun and happiness at little or no cost to others who do not belong to its family (herd).

Will it take something from us in exchange for its providence.

"For you were continually straying like sheep, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls." 1 Peter 2:25

"Like a shepherd He will tend His flock, In His arm He will gather the lambs And carry them in His bosom; He will gently lead the nursing ewes." Isaiah 40:11

"The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want." Psalm 23:1

What bomb?

That is not a bomb.

Actual is a synonym for true.

If Wayfarer is the technical writer for the instructions of the recent Yahtzee game I bought he is not to be trusted as an authority.

The capability for A.I. to revolutionize the healthcare industry is of interest to me.

Doctors already seem to rely on statistical likelihood when deciding on whether or not to administer certain tests. A sophisticated A.I. could have access to a huge database of actual stats by which more efficient diagnosis could be made. This could free up actual doctors to specialize rather than to deal with basic drug administration and reduce the stress of patient load.

Christ, I can't help myself.

Hanover's face shines forcefully over the hill (everyone is sweating).

Question is bound to the cross between two thieves and in his suffering calls out "My Hanny, My Hanny, why have you forsaken me?"

Hanover responds: I haven't set yet, but in the morning, you'll thank me.

Jesus Christ this is awful.

Hanover's Solar (golden) face materializes in the sky:

"Thou shalt be a useful adult or else be shamed to exile or death."

The face then falls to the sea and dissolves.

The king is dead, sharks nibble at his cracker body.

There is no light to illuminate the objective world. The massa confusa is undifferentiated chaos.

Will the night last indefinitely?

Question

Is looking for the Lapis Philosophorum, which is the transmutation of self by some means.

Mother in Laws should carry their own weight.

No.

Make time to get out of your head.

I defer to Dostoevsky:

" Now I ask you: what can be expected of a man since he is a being endowed with such strange qualities? Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove himself -- as though that were so necessary-- that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar.

And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point! He will launch a curse upon the world, and as only man can curse ( it is his privilege, the primary distinction between him and other animals), maybe by his curse alone he will attain his object -- that is, convince himself that he is a man and not a piano-key! If you say that all this, too, can be calculated and tabulated, chaos and darkness and curses, so that the mere possibility of calculating it all beforehand would stop it all and reason would reassert itself, then man would purposely go mad in order to be rid of reason and gain his point! I believe in it, I answer for it, for the whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano-key! It may be at the cost of his skin, it may be cannibalism! And this being so, can one help being tempted to rejoice that it has not yet come off, and that desire still depends on something we don't know?"

Fyodor Dostoevsky

The denial of agency is justified by its projection onto 'the blind watchmaker'. It's really poor philosophy, motivated by bad psychology. Mechanisms are unthinking, but people have no such excuse. — Unenli

This reminds me of Daniel Dennett when he calls consciousness an illusion but then turns around and says it is not moral (good) to tell susceptible individuals that they don't have free will. It is strange and disconcerting to disconnect the idea of consciousness from free will.

What other beliefs or types of action do people have no excuse for?

There aren't enough polling options.

This thread will be about Mr. Turtlehead and Mongrel's prose poetry.

Nietzsche's central argument for anti-realism about value is explanatory: moral facts don't figure in the “best explanation” of experience, and so are not real constituents of the objective world. Moral values, in short, can be “explained away.” Such a conclusion follows from Nietzsche's naturalism (on the latter, see the competing accounts in Janaway 2007 and Leiter 2013). As we saw in the context of Nietzsche's critique of morality, Nietzsche thinks a person's moral beliefs can be explained in naturalistic terms, i.e., in terms of type-facts about that person. Thus, to explain a person's moral judgments, one needn't appeal to the existence of objective moral facts: psycho-physical facts about the person suffice. Thus, since non-evaluative type-facts are the primary explanatory facts, and since explanatory power is the mark of objective facts, it appears that there cannot be any value facts. Moral judgments and evaluations are “images” and “fantasies,” says Nietzsche, the mere effects of type-facts about agents (D 119). — Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Nietzsche's Moral and Political Philosophy, by David Papineau

Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Nietzsche's Moral and Political Philosophy: 3.2 Nietzsche's Anti-Realism

The “inner world” is full of phantoms…: the will is one of them. The will no longer moves anything, hence does not explain anything either — it merely accompanies events; it can also be absent. The so-called motive: another error. Merely a surface phenomenon of consciousness — something alongside the deed that is more likely to cover up the antecedents of the deeds than to represent them….

What follows from this? There are no mental [geistigen] causes at all. (TI VI:3) — Nietzsche

This is over my head by it sounds like N. is arguing that free will is an illusion.

Don't despair if you are a hopeless philistine either. You can sublimate your will to power in all sorts of healthy ways, in a dominance hierarchy of your choosing. Take Donald Trump as an example. The most abject philistines can still be king.

Nazism in it's propoganda for example promoted a pretentious intellectual acknowledgement of commonly received moral values whilst cynically concealing the reality of it’s transgressions of same in practice - but from a process not really defined. — Lockhart

I think we see this contradiction all the time between professed values and actual behavior. There are always more basic (instinctual) sorting processes at play which we aren't very aware of.

We can profess a moral commitment to equality but it won't make less attractive people more attractive (how does attractiveness influence your moral judgment for example), since you are essentially deciding at times to choose against your instincts (swim upstream).

Blind faith in a dogma (fundamentalism) might be an example where the moral conditioning aspect of experience is undermined by an appeal to a vicarious source (sacred doctrine or appeal to authority). In other words, instead of trying to figure out what is good on the basis of risk taking, success and failure, in a field of action, we couple our action to simple rule following. Though at some basic level of social interaction, pragmatic decisions are always being made.

I guess my example is wrong then, depending exactly upon what is meant by vicarious experience. Seeing someone punished or shamed for an action is not an example of vicarious experience. It would be if we were reading about it though?

Someone who touches a hot stove will be far better conditioned (via memory of experience) to avoid touching a hot stove in the future than someone who just read that "one should never touch a hot stove".

We've had the evolved capacity for self-advancing strategies in group settings for a long time.

There are some species of bats that feed each others young but are able to recognize bats who do not participate in the same strategy. These non-reciprocating bats are then treated by others with a non-reciprocating strategy (ie. their young no longer benefit from open communal feeding).

This behavior probably matches human behavior in many local circumstances where reciprocal altruism is the norm (ie. I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine). I guess, even here, we are doing just this.

I don't see why reference to a law or custom, which restrains or modifies how an individual feels about some action, isn't tantamount to a kind moral awareness. It boils down to the simple fact that if you transgress a taboo, you will lose some kind of benefit conferred by following the rules about that taboo in a group setting.

As was the case of Nazism, if citizens didn't conform to the group behavior, they would have been putting their livlihoods at risk.

If not, then what makes the processor(s) in Data, Eva or any potential computer different from pencil and paper? — Marchesk

Pencil and paper can't get you a cup of "Earl Grey Tea, Hot!" or play Chopin, or win against you in a Chess match, et cetera. Pencil and paper can't even read itself.

But none of this makes it the case that moral judgments are anything other than how individuals feel about behavior. — Terrapin

Thanks for your elaboration.

Morality is "in-built" just like pain is. Moral judgments are a way that your brain works. Environment can influence those judgments, but you don't receive the judgments from your environment. — Terrapin

Well, I get the basic feelings (instincts) that are associated with action to form judgment but what determines moral judgment often comes from outside the individual (from culture) and is sometimes at odds with a person's feeling.

For someone who is morally naive might think it's okay to kill dogs for pleasure or walk around in public naked. They would need to learn that society deems these actions immoral. Such laws may or not have an intelligible reason for their being, so there may not be an obvious why.

It teaches that the proper mode is to be poor, helpless, and full of self-loathing. Agree? — mongrel

It's essentially the condition of Job (Biblical figure) where instead there is a lack of faith in God (or the standard morality) coupled with misfortune.

Why not exercise the power of revenge upon those who are just as undeserving for their fortune, out of spite? If life is worthless for the fringe, marginal, dispossessed, why not perpetuate the chaos of their own hell?

Some nihilists (driven mad by resentment) are wrecked beyond saving.

I still don't see why you would say morality is not learned.

If I put my hand on a hot stove as a child, do I not quickly "learn" that it is painful and undesirable to touch a hot stove.

...education of values is so inimical to vicarious experience

Morality can be learned by vicarious experience (ie. a shamed or punished substitute for yourself in some circumstances), such that those who really suffer its transgression become an example to others by which their own behavior can be modified. It's monkey see, monkey do (or don't do).

Reading about an execution (or softer punishment) is a bit different from observing one first hand though, or being a participant.

Morality isn't actually learned... — Terrapin

How is it acquired then? Please elaborate.

Moderators are here to kick out those who don't play the game (ie. buy the values of philosophy).

Intellectuals are here to shame us kids (ie the ugly and unformed) from grown up talk (ie. refined subtle ideas that pleasure you so).

Life is constant moral posturing, vying for status, tribal virtue signaling, work, work, work. Social pressure never lets up. No wonder people are unhappy. I can't compete with this stuff.

We live in a society where you are suppose to compete for your position. Nothing is assured. It's about winning, just like dipshit Trump says.

Maybe if I had a product to make me smell smarter, like a roll on brain deodorant stick.