Re: Yet Another Roswell Thread

On 14 Jul, 22:45, eina...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Ian Parker wrote:
On 13 Jul, 17:39, eina...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
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.

Mind you, after a consideration at a greater depth, I don´t see it
that way that memes clearly exchist. As far as I can see just about
everything memetics claims to explaine can be explained just as well
or even better by classical sociology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memes

I think I fundamentally agree with you. Except for one area Natural
Language where memes fit very well and where memetic markers (such as
"dormir" and "tojo el mundo") tell us how a language evolved and what
trading contacts were made in pre history.

If nemes function as a virus, how come that they spread so slow in
ancient times? I mean far slower than humans do travel, even in those
times. Often societies in ancient times coexisted side by side for
thousands of years, without changing the ways they functioned, To name
an example the oldest agricultural people of Europe coexisted for
thousands of years beside people who persisted with theyr hunting/
gathering lifestyle, gradually expanding theyr territories, while the
territories of the hunting/gathering groups gradually shrank. There is
no evidence that the hunting/gathering groups ever undertook the
transformation over to agricultural lyfestile. Evidence has been found
for ancient trading centers where the hunting/gathering groups and the
agricultural people met and exchanged products, such trade seemingly
lasting also thousands of years. Therefore the both types of people
maintained regular contacts more or less as it appers the whole time.
It appears that the hunting/gatherers really were gradually sidelined,
gradually pushed into the peripery without ever adapting over to the
winning lifestyle. I really think such factual examples are a real
problem for the theory of memetics.

Mind you, antroprology and sociology has researched such examples that
were still around close to modern times.

If they were a wirus the ideas ought to have competed

Good point. Orthodox sociology tells us how opinions are formed and
what the influence of individual thought and group thought is.
Orthodox psychology tells us what sort of people are likely to be
influences by what influences. In fact psychology is the "micro" world
and sociology the macro world. One concept that othodox sociology has
not taken on board, so far at any rate, is the concept of a
"temperature" in a society, that is to say the extent to which
individuals correspond to group influences, and to what extent they
think for themselves. If people think for themselves this results in a
noise level in a socialogical level.

You can tell BTW that I am a physicist and not a sociologist. I think
perhaps a little bit of thinking from Physics might be helpful.

One word about "democracy". Democracy is not simply giving people a
vote, they must have the information available to them to make an
informed decision. Blair made great play of being democratically
elected - false! The CIA and MI6 created a false picture. They were
not elected. If the British people had had true information they would
never have agreed to the war.

Also you need a degree of freedom of thought both legally and in
practice. It is no use voting for a government if the voters vote on
ethnic and religious lines. I have a particular country in mind here.

Sociology, the Web and AI. Conjoint Analysis, finding relationships
between widely varying parameters is now mainsteam sociology (and
marketing). Latent Semantic Analysis is closely related to Conjoint
Analysis and will place a web page in the form of a set of vectors.
Google is now gathering quite a lot of personal information on us. I
just wonder whether it could be used for some form of sociological
analysis. We have our vectors, how do the vectors for individuals
relate.

If combating terrorism is, in the main, the understanding of human
behaviour then AI must surely have a major role.
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.

You mind find it interesting to do a bit of reading in antropology,
but they often did research of dying societies before they finally
wanished, tribal societies that had been living the same way for
thousands of years. That does not mean they were allways unfamiliar
with people living some other lifestyle, or that they were allways
either unavare that other people were spreading while theyr numbers
were shrinking. Yet, in such examples they clung to theyr lifestyle,
and in cases still do in examples of some Amazonian tribes.

Examples like these in my opinion do not appear to indicate that ideas
function like viruses, i.e. like memes.

I think people are inherently conservative. How change happens is an
area for sociialogical investigation.
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.

All societies teach theyr young ones 'proper' behavior. Those who
behave 'not proper' tend to be punished in varyous ways, depending on
the severity of the offence as it is perceived by the others.

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.

People are tought also what to believe. In traditional societies being
tought the 'right' religious ways is part of the general teaching of
what is 'proper.'

To what extent do people follow these norms?

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.

Sounds bit like the 'psychohistory' idea Asimov used in his Foundation
books.

People are capable of reason, even though it may not nearly allways be
practiced. However, as people's tastes do wary so greatly, what may in
each case be a rational choyse based on each individual taste may
still from distance seem like a random choyse.

yes but what influence does the herd have? What is the effect of
reason? Does a particular sort of person follow the herd? What sort of
person think for themselves? Everyone does not.

I think there is a paradox here. People in charge of the military ad
such things as homeland security on the whole like people to be
conformist. In fact society is safer, at least from terrorism, if it
is non conformist.

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.

That is really the great difference between moder societies and past
societies. Past societies were conformist or in other words
'traditional'. It´s really not such a long time since western
societies were far more conformist than today, i.e. read about the
history of fashion, I mean of the 20th century. Nowdays, the Beatles
do not seem much but in the early 60s girls still wore skirts or
dresses, and boys cut theyr hair the way societal norms told them to.

Societies in the past had one view of groupthink. In modern sociities
some people think for themselves, but they form sub groups which are
conformist.

Let us look at right/left. I find it odd that the right in America is
against immigration and globalization. I think there should be cheaper
rates of health insurance for Spanish speakers who are more able to
engage in "health tourism". The right is against that. Now it used to
be the case that the left was for the state control of industry -
wholescale nationalization.

I personally believe in free enterprise and globalizaton as the means
of raising living standards. I am quite a way to the left in terms of
foriegn policy. If you look at both questions rationally you will find
that they are simply not related. Yet they are obviously related
socialogically.

About suicidal bombers, people who are yeat undecided about what
direction to take in life appear to be more vulnerable to
brainwashing. Have you ever heard about a suicidal bomber who was not
young? These people pray on young people who, like I said, are still
undecided about what direction to take in theyr life. In addition,
additional factors may play a part. Are they unemployeed? Are there
great many unemployeed like them around, making theyr prospects to get
a job small? Is it widespread the feeling around them that theyr
ethnic or religious is being treated in some unfair way? Have they
experienced personal loss, like say a family members being killed by
the perceived opressors? Factors like these appear to increase the
changes of a person becoming a suicide bomber.

An example of sociological viewpoint.

True we need to try and find out more.

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.

Now, remember Germany of the 30s. In 1928 the Nazi party only got 3%
of the wote. In 1930 they were the second largest party. The
difference, in 1929 the world depression began and in 1930 there were
millions of additional unemployeeds, creating a large pool of angry
dissillutioned people who demagouges could pray on.

Another example of seeing things through the sociolgical point of
view.

BTW - I find the rise of Hitler fascinating. How did he rise from beer
hall putsch to major threat to world peace? What backed him?
Ludendorff was a great backer of Hitler yet he was merely confortably
off. He could not have provided the vast sums required by the Nazi
party.
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.

As far as I know the idea was to strike several flyes in one stroke.
The precense of American forces in Saudi Arabia had long been very
unpopular among muslims. The intension was to move them to Iraq,
permanently. A democratic greatful Iraq would be US's primary ally
within the Middle East. The expected economic suggess under US help
would draw in the others, show them that democracy and economic
freedom can drive dividents even in the Middle East. Iraw in other
word would become a positive example, acting as an ideal for others.
In addition to all of that, it was expected that there would be a
divident regarding the crisis in Israel with the Palestinians.
Palestinians no longer would get money from Saddam, which was expected
to weaken them considerably. And last but not least, it would be shown
to all that USA was a force to reckon with.

Last but not least. That to my way of thinking is an extremely cynical
argument.
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,

Mind you, bad memes presumably will dye out, bad being seen in the
context that they are bad for those having them. If people are more or
less mindless being controlled by ideas in the form of memes, they
ought simply to shift over to a good meme when confronted by a better
meme. But instead it´s quite common that people cling to ideas that
are disfunctional for them, even societies do sometimes cling to lines
of thinking that do not work for them examples of that being hunter/
gatherers that go extinct themselves instead of changing/adapting to
the new ideas.

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.

If Germany of the 30s is the gaugche, then the best strategy in the
Middle East is to develope those societies, i.e. giving all of those
unemployeed people jobs.

Agreed. BTW in Iran the youth unemployment rate is 50%. To solve these
problems though societies will have to change. Force will in fact put
change back.


- Ian Parker

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