Re: Yet Another Roswell Thread

On 13 Jul, 17:39, eina...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

I don´t really like the theory about 'memes.' It´s quite well known
that people can be very powefully attached to an idea, and that
basigly just about any idea. For some, it may be interesting to think
about eccentric people. However, the thing about humans is really that
we are capable of reason, not that we nearly allways do practice it.
Islam did yes spread often enough along the caravan trails, but while
some may have become enchanted so to speak in many cases people appear
to have adopted Islam for higly practical reasons, basigly it reduced
friction with your customers if many of them had become muslims on one
hand, and there was another, tax reasons - but literally anyone who
was not a muslims had to pay an extra tax wherever muslim rulers had
taken over an area. You were also restricted from some activities.
Thus, societies taken over became muslim in time in many cases. In
ancient times it appears that spread of ideas wasn´t really were
efficient. If ideas were a virus, then people were a way lot less
likelly to be infected in ancient times. Many ancient ideas took a
very long time to spread. Nowdays ideas spread very quickly. The
difference is not simply due to difference in travelling time, it took
the knowledge of making paper close to 2000 years to spread from China
to Europe. Ancient societies were traditional and very, very reluctant
to change in comparison with today.

One of the problems with people arguing philosophies and peoples
behavior, is that we often tend to forget that we are after all
animals. Think about it, compare group animal behavior to human group
behavior and you'll find really a great number of paralells.

You are raising some very deep questions here. At one level memes
certainly exist and a very good example is natural language. I have
told you my background. Looking at French and Spanish you can enornous
simularities. The grammar is virually identical and so is a lot of
vocabulary and phrases like "todo el mundo" - "tout le monde". Now
evolutionary biologists say that branches occured at particular times,
purely because of genetic markers. The main mammalian groups were
divergent in the mid Cretaceous. We can say that in an "Eocene" period
the West Franks adopted the language of the Visigoths. The memetic
markers having identical maths to the genetic ones.

At a philosophical level we can say certain things I think. If people
believe in something fairly sensible and "empirical" you can argue
that they have made a free choice. The philosopy of science tells us
that truth is to be established experimentally. Now this is a fairly
common sense position. If during a solar eclipse the stars move
toether and if the orbit of Mercury precesses by 43" a century I will
believe in General Relativity. If this was not the case I would not
believe in it. There is no need to psychologically analyze this
viewpoint.

If on the other hand I were to say that if I blew myself up in a
markeyplace and killed a lot of civilians, I would be due for 72
houris, this requires analysis. One asks the question as to whether
there really is free will. If I were simply greedy and rodded a bank,
again I would simply be an immoral person.

Sociobiologists do try to asses people's capacity for herd behaviour.
It is to a large degree about belief structures. People do tend to
adopt the belief structures of those around them.

There is one question about free will and group behaviour which I
think we should bear in mind, and it is this. We may be free to make
our own decisions, but one person making a decision (unless they are
in an influential position) does not make much difference. Computer
programs are being devised, I can fish the references out if you like,
that attempt to model human behaviour and individuals are treated as
interacting bots. Quite clearly we need good sociological and
psychological research to make realistic models.

I have told you my background. I wrote back to one blogger saying that
they should not forget Calculus, and that the Ising model of
ferromagnetism was relevant to human behaviour. Free will may be
regarded as a temperature. Society has its Curie points. Above a Curie
point we have a society where free will and decision making was the
norm. Below we get a much more conformist society. The way too become
a suicide bomber is to meet other suicide bombers and live below the
Curie point. The Ising model is one of cooperative interaction.

Iron does in fact contain domains and Mars, as I have said, would
represent a microscopic grain of ferrite with a rather high Curie
temperature.

Democracy is safeguarded by heat. How anyone can say that high Curie
points will safeguard democracy. It is totally crazy.

I said that in the blog and the investigators in point of fact wrote
back agreeing with everything I had said.

As long as humans can remember groups of humans, no matter the scale,
have competed about control of resources, land, etc. At the smallest
scales the resemblance to animal behavior is complete, like when human
hunting and gathering groups sometimes fought with another such groups
on the control of territory - the comparison being to name an example
competition between groups of wolves or lions, if one group
temporarilly is stronger it may push the other off theyr land. Later
at larger scales, we were calling these conflicts wars. In ancient
times, different states attacked, invated others, sometimes formed
empires untill the next group came along and either destroyed that
empire, formed an empire of theyr own. Sometimes some of the conquered
folks were able to oust the foreign rule once the empire weakene´d for
one reason or another.

There is one odd fact here. In fact modern war is not fought for the
control of resources. The left mentions oil in connection with Iraq,
but this is not really the case. Any economic analysis will tell you
that war in the 21st century is a very inefficient way of securing
resources. Far far better to invest in exploration, investment in
things like Methane Hydrates, nuclear power (peaceful) and solar
energy.

The STATED reason for Iraq is to combat terrorism (which has in fact
got a lot worse because of the war). The real reason for Iraq may be
even more cynical than oil. It may simply be careers. The US accounts
for nearly 50% of total world military spending. If this were to be
cut drastically it would adversely affect careers, both in the
military and the CIA. If this is so the the competition for resources
is a struggle which is taking place within America not
internationally.

Like I said, we tend to be quite unaware that our beahvior is basigly
in number of respects quite similar to animal behavior. For most old
and ancient wars it appears to me that basigly the same fundamental
forces were at work as for when group animals compete.

Our struggles have tended though to be rather more vicious, due to our
superior killing capabilities at least in part. For whatever it´s
worth the wars changed after the peace of Westphalia which ended the
30 years war. That at least was the case about European wars.

It appears that along with the rise of our intelligence in our deep
past, we began to think about the world, wonder about it. It appears
that in ancient times the different groups of humanity had all some
sort of a religion. Invariably there was some sort of a creation myth,
which gave an explanation why everything exchisted. In ancient times,
the idea of separation of religion from other activities would have
been a totally alien line of thought. If we, to name an example pick
the inhabitants of ancient Babylon as an example, then they had a
hierarchy of gods, and there was a god or a deity for every major type
of activity, and it was simpy part of normal activity to ask them for
favour, wether it was the god of merchants or some other. The basig
idea appears to have been that we should thank the gods at all times
for good fortion in all endevours, as after all the believe everywhere
appears to have been that gods ran all things. The idea that nobody
can run from his destiny dates from this time.

For whatever it´s worth, when christianity came along, and swept the
ancient gods aside, it introduced the idea about the separation of
religion and other activities, meaning the idea that there were
worldly activities and religious activities, before that time all
activies had been tied with religion. Now I´m most familiar with the
history of the Roman church. The ancient Roman church adopted many of
the ideas of the ancient Greek phylosophers, there was a thriving
phylosophical discussion among the rank and file right from the first
of times. It was naturally watched and sensored by the church
authorities and sometimes and overstepping the line could lead to a
banishment, which usually meant that the person involved had to abase
himself and literally come crawling to Rome to beg the pope for
forgiveness, which often was granted. Burning of people wasn´t much
practiced untill after the protestant revolt, after which the old
church became in many ways a far more dangerous organization than
before.

All this does give credance to the general theory of memes. Some may
be beneficial, others less so,

Since Tomas Aquinas Roman Church philosophy appears not to have
evolved a great deal:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas

But according to him, humans are capable of reason, can solve matter
through reason, there are events that occur to us that are genuinelly
due to chance, yet in order to know absolute truths humans need divine
influence.

If we consider the difference between our traditions and those of the
Islamic world, they lack in the first instance the thought of the
separation of realms, that´s basig difference no. 1. That is perhaps
the most important single difference, as it implies that the idea that
something can be due to solelly ourselves is lacking. In other words,
somewhat similar to the idea of the ancient world, when everything was
due to the gods, everything is due to God. To devout muslims the
modern secular state as a result is a very unholy creation, basigly a
wrong.

As I understand it, according to the particular extremist muslim sect
which lies at the core of al-Qaeda, the idea that secularity is a
wrong is championed. That is one of the greatest single wrongs being
practiced by the modern societies according to them. They champion the
return of the rule of god, naturally through those who are closest to
the god athledgelly, i.e. those who have made theyr lifework the study
of schripture.

What needs to happen within Islam, is some sort of a reasonably open
phylosophical discussion that long was ongoing within christianity, in
which the idea of the separation of realms comes to be finally
accepted. Then the major religious shcooles of Islam will need to
champion that idea and explane to theyr flocks why it is OK.

If something like this doesn´t take plase the struggle between the
religious among Islam and the modern world will persist.

There are as I think you are aware a number of traditions within
Islam. If you are a moslem in a particuular mosque you gets the
tradition, the memes if youu like of that particular mosque. The
mosque may be Sufi, it may be Jihadic. Certainly a Jihadic mosque
cannot coexist with secular society. My point, which I know I am
laboring a little, is that a Jihadic Mosque is the result of
socialogical conditions, including the emhasis put on rote learning,
and the social framework in which its members live. Until we can
understand this we have little hope of combating it.

How to you stop terrorism? The snap answer is "raise the "temperature"
of society." If you are thinking of a collective phenomenon you
immediately get the idea of a temperature. I think things like the
Internet are, on the whole, hot.

About Darfur, I really can´t see what can be done. Clearly if a
western army would be sent in order to guard and secure the operations
of those trying to aid the needy it would soon fase similar kind of
attacks as those US forces are fasing today in Iraq. I think it
likelly that the European gowernments strongly suspect that to be the
case hence theyr reluctance to become deebly involved. But it is clear
that an army needs to be in plase to secure these operations. This is
something for the muslim world, as it appears to me that only a muslim
army could along with the African forces stay in the area in
reasonable peace with the local people.

Neither do I. Darfur is an interesting case. It is Moslem, but
African. The Christian, African south of Sudan fought a war which led
to the establishment of a Christian self governing entity of
Equatoria. Dafur is outside equatoria but non arab.


- Ian Parker


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