RE: EVO: "Natural Selection Is Acting On The Current Human Popul ation" (fwd)

From: Jason Axtell (jason@privacyright.com)
Date: Wed Apr 25 2001 - 15:27:53 PDT


Jeff Bone said:

> PS - Side thought. It's not enough to identify and classify
> memes; we also
> need a much better understanding of how memes propagate -- a kind of
> epidemiology of memes. How can we best deliver constructive
> memes into the
> population in order to subdue the destructive ones? Clearly
> common sense,
> "reasoning about things" and debate aren't good infection
> vectors. ;-) How can
> we turn tolerance, responsibility, equity, anti-collectivism,
> free trade, and
> rational self-interest into broadly-understood, culturally
> "cool," viral ideas?
> :-/

We already have a "science" devoted to meme epidemiology: marketing.
Unfortunately, most marketers spend most of their time and energy in
propagating what IMHO are exactly the memes we want to get rid of. So, the
key seems to be to convince companies like MTV to change their message.
Actually, to MTV's credit, they've been known to spread a "good" meme from
time to time. "Rock the Vote" spread the message to vote because that was
cool. Unfortunately, it didn't spread the message to vote responsibly and do
a little research on the issues before hand. Oh well. It was the right idea.

Jason Axtell
axtell@alum.calberkeley.org



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Apr 29 2001 - 20:26:10 PDT