Glider

Then I suppose you could say that it fails to fulfil the criteria that:

This is true. Like seeds, viruses are spoken of as being 'viable' not 'alive'. You can't kill a virus, but you can render it inviable. Viruses fulfill none of the criteria for life (e.g. respiration, reproduction, ingestion, excretion etc.). In their most simple form, they are simply a strand of viral RNA in a protein coat. Given that bacteria are alive, and in some cases are surprisingly complex organisms, how do you reconcile your two statements? In any event; "Are we a virus?" I don't think so. It doesn't work, even as an analogy. A better question might be "Are we bacteria?". On a global scale, the human species shows several startling similarities to bacteria.

C fibres are non-myelinated. These are peripheral fibres from polymodal receptors (free nerve endings) in the skin, and terminating in laminae I & II (distal portion of the substancia gelatinosa) of the dorsal horn in the spinal cord. Being non-myelinated, their condiction velocity is around 0.2 - 0.5 meters per second. They are associated with transduction of nociceptive stimuli (as are small diameter thinly myelinated, A:pdif: fibres).

This seems to me to be just like a (simplified) correlation coefficient where the value (between 0 and 1) is an indication of the strength of the relationship between reality and a statement describing it.

Dagnabbit! Now I'm gonna have to do research to find out...:slaphead:

Another point I think, is that all this could have been avoided had Desert Storm been carried to its logical conclusion. There was an opinion at the time that Hussein should be arrested and tried for crimes against humanity for his attempts to anihilate the mountain people. Does the way Desert Storm ended strike anyone else here as odd? At the time, when there was wholesale surrender of Iraqi troops and allied troops were advancing easily, everything suddenly seemed to come to an abrupt halt. I remember at the time thinking "What the hell's the point of that?....The job's not finished". I don't remember the reasons for it, but by any measure of a military operation, it was incomplete. It would have been like the Normandy invasion pressing through Europe, but stopping short of Berlin and then withdrawing, or, like wiping out all opposition up to, but not including Goose Green. Even on a section level, if troops need to take a command post, they have to take out the defences, but they don't stop there...they take the post and then secure the entire area. Just seemed odd to me.

30,000 years isn't that long ago. That would be the middle of the late Pleistocene Epoch (35,000 - 25,000 years ago). The Earth already supported a fairly rich and diverse population of human beings by then, not to mention huge herds of ice-age animals, Aurochs, Mammoth, Giant deer, etc, etc. The flipping of the magnetic poles couldn't have done that much damage.

Beige is the new black?

I never understood this pole-shift thing. I seem to remember reading somewhere that the magnetic poles of the Earth have flipped several times in its history, and that these flips, when they happen, happen extremely quickly (i.e. the magnetic field becomes more and more unstable, but then reaches a threshold and 'jumps' to its opposite state, where it quickly restabilises) but I don't remember anything about it being a catastrophic event. I seem to remember (and my memory is very hazy on this) that beyond having a bunch of very pissed off cartographers, pilots and helmsmen, we would barely notice the event. Why would magnetic North becoming magnetic South be catastrophic? Is it that the cost of recalling all compasses and repainting all the needles would cause a global economic collapse?

Exactly. This is why (not knowing an awful lot about meme theory) I wonder if the idea of 'meme' is more an analogous model for the 'evolution' of knowledge. People tend to use models appropriate to their time. For example, in describing the forces of 'sexual energy' and the principle that it will find a way to manifest even if suppressed, Freud used the steam engine as a model. Cognitive scientists in the 1930s used telephone switchboards as models for information processing and more recently they used the modern computer to model the concepts of short-term (RAM) and long-term (HD) memory. Whilst these act as useful analogies, everybody using them recognised that they shouldn't be taken literally and were only a useful 'short-hand' for the principles being studied. Whilst I can understand the use of the term 'meme' as a useful model to describe the nature of knowledge, and the progression of knowledge and it's effects upon individuals and generations, I still can't see what it is about memes and memetic transfer that can't be explained using existing learning theory.

This is sadly true. Every time there is opposition to something with demonstrations and so-on, the appearance that all those demonstrating are united is an illusion. They may all be united by their stance agains war, but each individual and individual nation has their own particualr agenda. What frustrates me are the dubious rationalisations for the relative stances. Those nations opposed talk of law and morals, whilst anything which might highlight a conflict of interests (e.g. their investments and dealings with Iraq) is carefully avoided. Those for war talk of national security and morals, whilst anything which might highlight a conflict of interests (e.g. oil and the promise of a cure for recession) is carefully avoided. Is it any wonder that the people on the streets are becoming cynical. Trust in politics and politicians is at an all time low, and I can see why. I am not opposed to Americans (or America) in general, but I am opposed to this war, pricipally on ethical grounds: 1) There is still no evidence that Iraq present a threat to the national security of the USA or the UK. Nonetheless, Saddam Hussein is accused of braking the law, but if to engage in this war, we also break the law, then our very action undermines our rationale for that action. 2) Being against the war is not the same as being against America or for Saddam Hussein. Personally, I think he is is a @*$&% who "£($@&@ *%^£@ and &@££*!"@ with trained goats. I think he should be %$@£" )*!&%£$ *^£ using hot scalples and &^£%$@@ with his &£^%"@:£$ and should have his *$@@"* *£&^$%@ by rabid weasles. Nonetheless, I think it's worthy of note that of the hundreds or thousands of people who will die, be maimed or have their lives utterly destroyed in this war, the people it's least likely to happen to are Saddam, George and Tony. There have been a small rash of programmes on UK TV recently, talking about public support for 'our boys' in the gulf. I strongly suspect this is a cynical move to engage support for the war (and Blair) by pulling the guilt/sympathy/jingoism card. This pisses me off, because it assumes people can't tell the difference between supporting the troops, and supporting the war. I do not support this war. Nonetheless, the troops are there because they have been mobilised and they do not have the choice. If senior officers said to the government "Nah...bad decision...we're not going", that would be counted as treason. If the men under the command of those officers said the same, that would be counted the same. I support the troops fully. However ill equipped they are, due, by the way, to chronic cutbacks and 'downsizing' initiated by the very government who put them in the Gulf in the first place (brilliant move Blair: give them cheap-shit micky mouse equipment and personal weapons by airfix and then ask them to fight your damned wars....you @&%£(*@ dummy!), the British army consists of some of the most highly trained and motivated soldiers in the world. When asked to do the job, they will do it and they will do it well. If history records this as an unjust war, then I will still support the troops and no blame should be attached to them for the misguided whimsy of the governments that mobilised them. Perhaps the troops shouldn't be over there, but it's not their fault that they are. Making policy is not the role of a soldier, it is the role of a politician. If a man points a gun at another man, and pulls the trigger, I blame the man, not the gun. If a government points an army at another country and gives the order to engage, the same principle applies.

That's interesting. So only information passed through mimicry can be "strictly" classified as memetic? It's true that classically conditioned responses exist only in the conditioned brain and can't be passed on. It's also true that most human learning is operant (Skinnerian) as opposed to classical (Pavlovian). However, I'll have to think a bit about the differences between operant and memetic learning. This is a point. As you probably know, there are troops of chimps that use tools to break nuts. There are some interesting observations here. There have been found two costal populations of chimps, each of which has developed a disparate method of nutcracking. One population uses pieces of wood as hammers, but do not use rocks. The other uses rocks as hammers, but not pieces of wood. Within each group, the nutcrackng method most likely originated through operant learning (the organism operating on its environment until a desirable outcome resulted, thus reinforcing the action and increasing the probability of its being repeated). However, I have to disagree with Blackmore here. Imitation must have played a role in the spread of this behaviour within each group. There are several pieces of evidence in support of this. Firstly, there is the 'perception-behaviour link' (see e.g. Dijksterhuis, 2000). In short, this provides evidence for a direct (preconscious and automatic) link between perceiving a behaviour, and performing that behaviour. This has also been shown to exist in humans and has been termed "The Chamelion Effect" (Chartrand & Bargh. 1999). Secondly, it is extremely unlikely that all members of each group developed the techinique simultaneously. This is supported by the observation that each individual shows a different degree of success when cracking nuts. Indeed, some individuals fail completely, but nonetheless keep trying. This cannot be a result of any kind of operant reinforcement (there is none if the nut remains whole), but must be a result of imitating the behaviour of those around them. Thirdly, the fact that each group uses a different tool, the group that uses rocks, don't use logs, and the group that uses logs, don't use rocks, suggests a direct imitation of observed behaviour rather than the application of a learned general principle (which would result in the animals using any sufficiently hard and heavy tool that would crack the nut). Nonetheless, I think that evolutionary processes can be seen at work here. For example, the group that uses rocks are generally more successful (more individuals achieving success, faster and with less effort) than those using wood. Thus, the rock using idea has an advantage. The group that uses wood on the other hand has slightly fewer successes (more individuals failing), and the successes often take longer and require more effort. Thus, should food become a serious issue through some environmental change, it is likely that the rock using idea would survive and the wood using idea wouldn't. However, the reasons for this can also be explained in terms of reinforcement (operant conditioning). The rock using idea is more reliably reinforced than the wood using idea and so is less likely to extinguish in the long term than the wood using idea. References Chartrand, T. L., & Bargh, J. A. (1999). The chameleon effect: The perception-behavior link and social interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76 (6), 893-910. Dijksterhuis, A., Bargh, J. A., & Miedema, J. (2000). Of men and mackerels: Attention, subjective experience, and automatic social behavior. In H. Bless & J. P. Forgas (Eds.), The message within: The role of subjective experience in social cognition and behavior (pp. 37-51). Philadelphia: Psychology Press/Taylor & Francis. Sure. A few books of interest (and a good starting point) are: Holy Blood, Holy Grail and Messianic Legacy. (both by Michael Baigent, Henry Lincoln and Richard Leigh), also The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception (Baigent & Leigh). The authors are researchers, and as such they make sure they present evidence in support of what they say. Should they choose to indulge in interesting conjecture, they make certain the reader knows it is only conjecture. They also make it clear that they are principally dealing with supportable historical events and interpretation of such based upon research based evidence and are not dealing with questions of faith. These books contain reference sections which can provide you with further relevant reading if you want it. They are definitely worth a read and are very 'readable' but (of course) it is up to you to evaluate them for yourself.

True enough...sadly.

The equipment is called an Electromagnetic Stimulator (EMS). These come in several forms, but are essentially electrical coils formed into a configuration that allows the projection of more or less focussed EM pulses onto areas of the cortex. We have a couple of ring EMSs, but they come in many forms according to need. The EM pulses stimulate the area of the brain to which they are applied. This avoids the need to open people's heads to apply direct stimulation through electrodes (more focussed, but also more messy). A chap called Wilder Penfield performed a number of direct electrode stimulation studies. The subjects were undergoing necessary surgery at the time. Direct electrical stimulation is used under these circumstances to isolate specific areas (everybody's brain is slightly different). A minute charge is applied, and the patient is asked what they feel (patients undergoing brain surgery are conscious, as this is the only way to get feedback to ensure you're messing with the right bit). Anyway, Penfield found that stimulation of areas of the temporal lobe elicited memories in the patients. These were fragments of conversation, tunes, childhood events and so-on, but experience vividly and lucidly (we know now that the temporal lobes are accociated with memory function). We know that indirect stimulation using EMS can produce the same effects. However, EMS is less topographically specific, and so stimulates less specific and larger regions of the cortex. Also, as the cortex consists of only 6 layers of neurons, there is some sub-cortical stimulation too. EMS of the temporal lobes will produce a confused jumble of memories and experiences similar to those experienced in dreams. In answer to your question, activity in the brain does produce changed in the electrical field. These are what Electroencephalographs (EEGs) record, and is why the recording electrodes only need to be attached to your scalp, and not directly to your brain. However, these fields are the result of electrical processes in the brain which influence our behaviour, and do not inflence our behaviour in themselves. The reasons EMS works is not because it influences the EM fields of the brain, but because it affects the electrical functioning of the brain. The conclusion we can draw from this is that an EM field of sufficient magnitude can influence the electrical functioning of the brain. The main argument concerning overhead power lines (usually given by the power company) is that they do not generate an EM field of sufficient magnitude to have any effect, much less do any harm. However, there is research to show that whilst this may generally be the case, in certain areas peculiarities of the local geography (e.g. the presence of high concentrations of iron in the ground, the presence and orientation of local water tables or rivers, the orientation and proximity of a house to the power lines and these other factors and so-on) can provide a 'lensing' effect, resulting in localised areas of EM radiation of significantly higher intensities than those recorded simply by standing under the power lines. These 'focussed' areas of EM have been shown to have some quite severe effects on some people. People's own particular body chemistry also has an influence, e.g. of two people living in a house which was in a focussed area of EM, only one was affected. This was attributed to differences in their body chemistry. The aguments concerning power lines now is do these 'focussed' areas of EM present a real danger (beyond headaches, disorientation and nausia)? And, is long-term exposure to low level EM as potentially harfmul as short-term exposure to higher levels?

And that's the point: It is largely still conjecture. Whilst I agree with Aman in principle, especially the part about not turning our back on a known backstabber, the problem is that whilst we know he (Hussein) is a liar we are, under our own laws, obliged to prove it. It's the same thing that prevents courts from convicting people on the basis that "we believe you are lying, principally because you have done so before". The contention that it's ok to break the law to bring a law breaker to justice is, at the very least, problematic.

If the lottery draw is truly random, then it is not possible to predict the combination as all possible combinations will have an equal probability of being drawn. If there are in the region of 13.9 million possible combinations, each with an equal probability of being drawn, your chances of being able to predict them are the same as anyone else's (in the region of 13.9 million to 1), whether or not you use a specialist piece of software or not. A random number generator would be as effective. If somebody did successfully create something that can predict the lottery outcome at anything above chance level, all it would show is that the draw was not truly random.

Having said all that, from what little I know about memes, I can't see that there is anything concerning their transmission and perpetuation that can't be explained in terms of social learning. What is it about memes that cannot be explained in terms of existing learning theory (e.g. operant/classical conditioning)? When discussing memes, I think there is a danger of beginning to see them as independent and objective entities (like bacteria and viruses), but I don't see how this can be the case. Memes must be a result of thought originally, and only after they come into being (perhaps as a flash of inspiration; a 'eureka' moment in a single progenitor) and begin to spread can it be said that thought is a result of a meme. Could it be that 'meme' is simply a generic term for 'idea, concept, belief, methodology' etc.? If so, then there are already theories to explain their propagation.

Arguably yes, in the same way as the environment can be said to drive evolution. For example, no mutation is of direct benefit to the organism. However, through serendipity some turn out to be of indirect benefit due to the peculiarities of the environment. Take sickle cell anaemia, this is detrimental to the organism and significantly reduces life expectancy, but in West Africa it serves as a defence against malaria allowing (only) those with sickle cell anaemia to live long enough to procreate. Thus, SCA is now prevalent among that population. Memes must have provided some advantage to the organism originally (the memes for the process of creating fire, cooperative hunting, tool making methods and so-on). It could therefore be said that the genesis of memes provided an advantage but required a larger brain, so those with larger brains had the advantage. However, the argument could become cyclic. I think it is debatable whether memes drove the development of a bigger brain, or whether the random mutations leading to a bigger brain resulted in memes. What does he mean by "a strict replicator analogy"? (I should point out that you are much more up on this subject than I am. This is out of my area). If we take 'meme' to mean 'idea' or 'concept', then intuitively we can see that evolutionary forces apply. Ideas come and go; some are extinguished, those providing an advantage tend to prevail. Ideas change (mutate) if the change provides an advantage, the idea continues, if not the idea will extinguish. Are these two perspectives mutually exclusive? Take bacteria for example. We carry with us a wide range of bacteria as naturally occurring bodily fauna. Our gut is packed with them (particularly escherichia-coli). Without these we would suffer terribly. This can be seen in people who are given high bolus-dose antibiotics orally to control one kind of bacterial infection, but it also kills off their natural gut bacteria as a side effect and subsequently they suffer digestive problems (in some cases severe) and need to treated separately for that. So there are beneficial bacteria with which we exist in a symbiotic balance (E-coli), and there are bad, pathogenic bacteria which parasitize us. Even beneficial bacteria can be bad in the wrong place (e.g. E-coli in a wound), but good or bad, detrimental or beneficial, they are all bacteria. Could the same thing be said of memes? There are good memes, with which we exist in a kind of symbiotic balance; memes which provide us with an advantage and so we continue to propagate them, and there are bad memes; parasitic memes which provide us with no advantage and rely on fear or paranoia or generally the more negative aspects of our psyche in order to propagate? Again, I should point out that you are more qualified in this area than I am, but it seems reasonable to me. In the same vein as the baceria analogy; whilst all being bacteria, different forms can act as either a symbiote or a pathogen. I see no reason why the same could not be said of memes. Whilst all being memes, some may act in a symbiotic fashion, whilst others may parasitize us. Religion is a good example. Like E-coli it may originally have served a useful purpose. For example, the development of Christianity. In it's original form, it served to provide hope to an oppressed people (the Judeans, Judea having been annexed by Rome), and to unite them against a common enemy. It served as a kind of social glue and gave the people a unified identity. It has even been proposed that Jesus (aka Joshua. Jesus is Greek for Joshua) and his cohort manipuated certain events so he could be seen to fulfill older prophesies, and thus to provide the evidence that would establish his lineage from the royal house of David, and his identity as the rightful Priest-King of Judea and so unite the people behind him. In any event, it served a socio-political function and so was beneficial at the time. However, take it out of place and context (like E-coli in a wound), and it can become (in many cases) a source of contention and strife; an 'infection' relying (as you suggest) on certain psychological reinforcers (the promise of reward and the threat of damnation) which play on innate cognitive structures (e.g fear) and beneficial memes (language, the written word and so-on) for its continued survival.

Weapons are like matches, you can't set them off and still have them. I have a wallet, specially designed and built to hold money. Therefore, I must have money to put in it? I am not saying Saddam doesn't have WMD, I am just pointing out that the reasoning you use to reach the conclusion that he does is flawed, and so any conclusion based on it will be unsound (i.e. open to alternatives). If we are to go to war, I would like it to be based on sound reasoning and (preferably) sound evidence. I certainly would not wish to launch a strike on the evidence of empty shells, whatever they were designed to hold.

I don't think the drive to replicate is a function of the meme per se, rather it is a function of the individual exposed to it. To continue the virus analogy, a person would first need to be susceptible to infection (i.e. consider the meme significant on some level). Once infected, they could pass it on ('infect' others with it), in which case the meme could be considered successful and would proliferate. But (as with non-airborne viruses), the drive to do so and mechanism of transmission would be a function of the psychology and behaviour of those 'infected' with it, rather than the meme itself. For example, not all ideas are considered good by everybody exposed to them (varying susceptibility). Those who considered an idea 'good' would do so due to their particular psychological make-up. As a result of considering the idea 'good' they may then wish to share it with others of a like mind (behavioural drive). Richard Dawkins discusses memes in his book "The Selfish Gene". Here is a section you may find interesting: "Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leading from body to body via sperm or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation. If a scientist hears, or reads about, a good idea, he passes it on to his colleagues and students. He mentions it in his articles and his lectures. If the idea catches on, it can be said to propagate itself, spreading from brain to brain. Memes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically but technically. When you plant a fertile meme in my mind, you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell. And this isn't just a way of talking -- the meme for, say, 'belief in life after death' is actually realized physically, millions of times over, as a structure in the nervous systems of people all over the world." Alternatively, you could do a literature search on the net. I think that's a very good analogy.

I would say that memes are replicators, but in the sense that viruses are replicators. That is, they can't self-replicate, rather, they need to infect a host and then alter the behaviour of the host in such a way that the host begins to replicate the meme (or virus). Unlike viruses, memes have no physical form or substance (beyond, aguably, the physical form of knowledge or memory). It has been argued that all knowledge is memetic, so in their purest form, memes exist only as patterns of thought.

Hehehe...good point. Tricky question though. How do you prepare for a planet killing event in minutes? or even hours? Preparing for your own death usually involves working on the assumption that most other people will survive it. That's the only reason for making a will, or 'putting one's affairs in order'. If you replace that assumption with the knowledge that everyone else is gonna be toast too, what's left to do? Sit around knowing that you and the people who mean the most to you are all going to die. I suspect that knowing these were your last few minutes and enjoying them are probably mutually exclusive. If there was nothing that could be done about it, I think that knowing would probably be a bad thing. Most people occupy much of their present with preparations for the immediate future. Personally, I have been working for the last ten years towards a specific goal, and this has involved quite a bit of sacrifice and not having lots of fun. Telling me that I would now never reap the rewards of that effort would not facilitate a party mood. Take that (and all hope) away, and I doubt many people would have too much fun. Moreover, I think there are those who, given the absolute certainty that there would be no consequense to their actions, might spend their last few minutes making the last few minutes of those around them quite miserable. In sum, I think with only minutes or hours to go, I'd rather not know, especially as tequila tends not to give me hangovers anyway.

This doesn't answer my question, but in any event, I truly hope that you never find out first hand exactly how much of an impact even a minor schitzophrenic episode can have.

hmmm....and how would you know that nobody else sees them? Would you go around asking people if they see the little froggies?

I see. By the way, how would you know they were only hallucinations?