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doloras wrote:

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Those who care about Wikipedia might want to go and prevent the article on Project Chanology being deleted.

Here's where I reveal myself as an internet dummy. Said page is listed as semi-protected. Er... is that good?
The blurb states it can only be edited by registered users, but looking at the semi-protected pages list I gather this might be one they're likely to keep their eye on due to registered users who erm... worship Xenu.

Followed a link to the S*******ogy Fair Game page ('Fair Game' being the term by which it's "okay" to fuck up the lives on non-S*******logists and enemies of Elron) the other day, and that seems to have disappeared. Curiously enough. Can't think why.

Hmmm. Know where you're coming from, particularly about the fundamentalist atheist tendency - extremes create extremes and those wanting ANONYMOUS to go after one of the "big three" are, I would suggest, only interested in rationalism as a stick with which they can beat people over the head.
I think there's a subtle distinction to be made here between what Dawkins has said and what has been generally understood, and I don't think he has actually said that religion is the root of all evil, rather that 'evil' (however you may wish to define it, which is another subject entirely) tends to flourish where thought is based on half-truth or supposition as opposed to objective evidence. The title of his recent ish TV show The Root of all Evil was apparently not his choice and not one he was particularly happy with. Furthermore he has made very similar points to your own observation giving Martin Luther King and Johnny Cash as examples.
"Believing that "religion" is some kind of malignant non-material virus which causes problems in and of itself seems... superstitious..."
Not at all (although the malignance or benevolence probably is debatable), self-replicating ideas (memes) behave in an entirely viral manner. Apocalyptic cults (as an extreme example) tend to feed on insecurities so their beliefs are easily spread without any need for justification - that there really is a coming apocalypse, that the blind boy child can see again etc.
Personally, I'm uneasy with any one-size-fits-all philosophy, and I don't regard all forms of religion as being part of one great big nasty blob, but there's big grey areas here, and I'm distrustful of any belief sytem (whether religious or political) which facilitates censorship or other forms of oppression. I believe in the great majority of cases, religion can provide a convenient excuse without necessarily being the root cause, but I'm still glad we have Dawkins because I don't think hellfire preachers who believe homosexuals, non-believers, and people who teach the theory of evolution are "inherently evil" (for example) are just going to go away with a few hundred signatures on a petition.
"Religion, like any idea, is not a real thing but a way of explaining real things..." We both know this, but there's plenty who apparently think otherwise and are quite happy to express certain more extreme beliefs with unfortunate consequences.

doloras wrote:

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We seem to be throwing around the word "meme" a lot. As the Book of the War says, though, exactly why do we need a special name for a subset of ideas? All ideas can be replicated and passed along, and I reject the idea that some ideas "self-replicate".

Can you please explain what you mean by "the idea that some ideas self-replicate"? It implies that someone has suggested thoughts or concepts which exist independent of the human mind and are somehow able to copy themselves despite the absence of a medium in which they might be copied. I don't believe I have suggested this and if I have then obviously my word goodness was playing up. I don't believe anyone else has suggested it either, except possibly Lawrence Miles.

doloras wrote:

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I just reject the idea that certain ideas are "viral" and seize unwilling brains. An idea only seems plausible if it fills a "niche" in the ideological ecosystem, which in the final analysis is determined by material and social reality.

Viral precisely because they replicate using source material from the host, source material being existing language or ealier variants upon the same idea. And once again, I have no idea where this notion that memes seize "unwilling brains" comes from. A meme will only succeed in an environment which other related memes have made conducive to its acceptance. If I've had a lifetime of people telling me that elves are real, and very few people telling me they aren't, I'm possibly more likely to accept someone telling me pixies are real than not. Meme is simply a convenient word for a concept or even a 'unit of culture'. It is used in discussing models of cultural evolution simply for purposes of clarity, so as to avoid sentences like "the idea of an idea" etc. In arguing some of these points we might just as well be asking whether language is a valid idea. Culture exists. We use the model of memes in order to examine this. Nobody (I hope) believes that memes lurk on corners ready to leap out on unsuspecting passers by and convert them into Seventh Day Adventists or whatever.

I think it's fair to use a model where individual consciousness is a reflection of a society's "infosphere", but if that were strictly true we'd all be alike.

Firstly I might question where this infosphere exists, or at least in what context is it perceived and given meaning. Human consciousness, I would imagine, which brings us back to the m word to some extent. Secondly, even in the most homogenous society, the simple fact of age differences would theoretically prevent the possibility of us all being alike in terms of thought and perspective. However, I accept that you weren't arguing in support of this idea.

I think individual consciousness is a "wavefront" where your own experience goes up against what you are taught by your society's cultural apparatus, which is a more complex metaphor than "cells in a body" and I feel much more useful.

If the metaphor you refer to concerns memes then "cells in a body" is perhaps an oversimplification. Memes have been likened to genes more by virtue of their being prone to replication AND subject to a selection process over time. Genes for high-melanin content in the skin will tend to be selected in an environment with strong sunlight, and genes for a lower melanin content will do less well in the same environment. Similarly a racist meme ('they're all terrorists') will be more easily replicated in an environment which is already culturally predisposed towards this form of intolerance having been 'softened up' (in theory) by earlier, more innocuous precedents ('coming over here taking our jobs'). However, I agree that your suggestion may indeed be more useful depending upon the context. If the context is dealing with an existing social condition, then a discussion of memes might be deemed irrelevant. If discussing the mechanism of the cultural evolution which has resulted in a particular social condition, then I cannot see the objection. A meme is, after all, only a model and is in certain circumstances a particularly elegant one, I feel. With regards to the discussion of culture in general (whether by referencing memes or otherwise), baking a pie can be described in terms of what the piemeister actually did with the dough, or what happened at a molecular level. Simply because the chef did things in terms of flour and rolling pins does not negate the fact that something did occur at a molecular level by which the pie was brought forth into crusty or otherwise existence.

As is probably clear, I disagree with your apparent claim of memes failing to provide a valid model of cultural evolution. The argument that personally swings it for me is derived from the age old question of why humanity made that initial transition from hunter-gatherer to settled farming community. And it IS an age old question because, contrary to intuitive sense, the hunter-gatherer generally had a much better existence than the early farmer. Both fossil records and study of present-day equivalents show that a hunter-gatherer enjoys a far more varied diet (with a much better nutrional balance) than the settled farmer, is healthier and (due to better diet) less prone to birth defects, and is able to maintain his or her existence with an average 15 hours toil a week as opposed to working pretty much every waking hour. This is probably why some hunter-gatherer communities have managed to survive even in the present day despite seemingly overwhelming odds against.
So what compelled nomads to take to a life of settled drudgery?
Nobody knows, but meme theory seems to have provided the only credible explanation thus far. Memes are simply ideas. They have no conscious will and the only influence upon their selection (or otherwise) is simply how popular they turn out to be, irrespective of whether or not they fall in line with any notion of "common good". The selection and propogation of a meme has no more moral dimension than that of a gene. Genes for congenital heart disease continue to be selected because, unless it occurs well in advance of puberty, there is nothing to deselect this trait. Similarly, memes will spread in similar disregard of long-term consequences. Whoever thought farming was a good idea may have been considering long-term security, and it has an obvious appeal, despite the fact that it actually means a lot more work for much poorer rewards but as such things are only evident over long periods of time, it is not so easy to relate them to something that sounds like a good idea in the here and now. So in theory, a few people decide to stick with that patch of teocintli maize that their nomadic travels take them past a few times a year, maybe they build some dwellings, plant a few more things and BINGO suddenly everyone's trying to keep up with the Joneses: "look at them with their fine clothes and crops and here we are scouting for rabbits and berries."

If anyone's seriously interested in meme theory, Susan Blackmore's book is fantastic (see other thread I started when I thought we'd gone OT), Dennet's 'Darwin's Dangerous Idea' is said to be good though it's still on my to-read list, and Richard Brodie's 'Viruses of the Mind' has some good points bookended by chapters of utter excrementitious drivel. Dawkins (who coined the phrase) has touched upon the subject in an essay and one chapter of The Selfish Gene (another wearyingly misunderstood book), but hasn't actually written that much on the topic as everyone seems to think, though his writings on evolution and biology are both beautiful and inspiring. If you ask me. Which admittedly you didn't.

Uuuuuuuuuuuuuugh.
Can we please now talk about Doctor f****** Who or something.
Hugs and kisses - WA XXX