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The Art of Memetics: Cliff Notes

Started by Cramulus, September 08, 2010, 04:50:12 PM

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Jasper

Odd side note:  This is one of the first pics you get googling egregore:

http://s2.hubimg.com/u/308301_f260.jpg

Cramulus

#16
Chapter 4: Belief as a Meta-Condition: Paradigm and Brand
http://artofmemetics.com/memetics/page24.html

The most common way that somebody comes to believe something is to experience a buildup of meaning, followed by a catalytic event which triggers a new internal state.

Going back to our idea of "meme space", we can visualize the moment of acquiring a belief as an individual coming into direct contact with that idea in meme space. While this interaction is entirely subjective and personal, it is affected by other social mechanisms.

You can't convince somebody of something by countering what they believe with what you believe. You have to get them to question their position, draw attention to its inherent contradictions or instability. Then you can introduce your idea as a means of resolving that doubt and imbalance.

In psychic kung-fu, the best stance is not to meet your attacker head on, but slightly askew. Start off by understanding the angle they're coming from – understand their world view, the things which motivate them. Try to get inside their headspace, agree with their reality. This will help you detect flaws or contradictions in their beliefs. Ask questions which lead to more questions. When they are confused, their reality is most malleable. This is the best moment to suggest a new course of action, one that is on a slightly different angle than their previous one. Get them to imagine themselves doing what you want and it solving their confusion. Then let them go, moving along a new vector.

Before you can perform any memetics, you have to be in the right stance. Opportunities for yourself and others will appear once you examine your own social network. Diagram it, figure out where your strongest signals are coming from. You can get better feedback for your actions by connecting different nodes or people who influence you. It's possible that you can only accomplish your goals once they are compatible with the motion and ecology of your network. The construction and tuning of feedback loops to achieve the right signal intensity can help solve many individual problems.

In the 60s and 70s, Chaos Magic came into popularity amongst the robe and wizard hat tribe. The central idea, as expressed by Peter Caroll in Liber Null, is that belief is a tool which can be manipulated to achieve certain ends. Instead of aligning themselves with an established tradition, the chaotes' techniques were chosen pragmatically, based on what seemed to actually work. Over time, many of them (including the authors of this book) have drifted away from traditional "magical" practices and into marketing, memetics, and mastermind techniques. They see themselves as part of a great reunification between science and magic, one that uses scientific attitudes and concepts (namely complexity, flexibility, and ecology) to achieve personal goals. In our fast-changing world of nested information systems, influence, attention, and reputation are more useful concepts than cause and effect.

For a signal to be picked up by a node, it needs to be salient. It must have a quality which makes it noticeable, distinct from the signals around it. To make the jump between exposure and infection, the meme must align with the needs and priorities of the host. The host's needs are influenced by other memes present within that network. This leads to "meme clustering", in which a host tends to be infected by groups of similar memes.

When designing a meme, one must ask "What is the emotional reward of incorporating the meme into your behavior set?" Our reactions to things are always oriented around the meaning we've attached to a given situation. Memes work by creating associations between a situation and an emotion. Our likelihood to approach or retreat from a situation is influenced by the emotions associated with it. For example, jokes works on the principle that the person telling the joke receives an emotional reward for doing so. Better jokes lead to better rewards, thereby increasing their chance of survival. Also consider the powerful emotional charge associated with being "right".

A good Brand takes advantage of the collage process of building one's identity. A brand never presents a complete narrative, it engages its target by telling part of a story. A good marketer builds the consumers needs and emotional triggers into the brand's story. When the target participates in the narrative (usually by buying the product), that story becomes built into their identity. Consider the story presented by Nike's slogan, "Just do it". Somebody with the need to "just do it" will have an easier time resonating with Nike's products.

Memetics studies the ways that signals are transmitted and transformed by various networks. The system can be likened to a computer. Human beings, social networks, and communication systems are the hardware, the memes are the software. The structure of the hardware restricts the ways that memes can be transmitted. When a message reaches its target, its emotional associations may predispose the target to act in a certain way, retransmitting the meme. The transmitter receives feedback from the network. Both the transmitter and receiver experience a rush of energy that will influence further output.

A poor use of metaphors is responsible a significant amount of misunderstanding about the world. Our impression of the world is largely based on how we describe it. There are several ways in which our language restricts us. Once we have labeled something, it difficult or at least inconvenient to revise that label. In this way, our language suggests that change is difficult. We are limited by our perceptions of things as being fixed, unchanging over time. Because of this, we need to develop tools which make us aware of our langauge's shortcomings (such as e-prime), and pay special attention to feedback not contained by language.

When we observe change and adaptation in an individual, we call it growth or learning. When we see it in a group, we call it organization or politics. Even these definitions restrict our understanding (and therefore free will) in certain ways.

Social situations also constrain an individual's free will. Timothy Leary sought to understand how a person acts within a social group through a tool called the Interpersonal Circumplex, or personality compass. This tool conceptualizes the relationships between humans within a group along two axises: cooperation-opposition and dominance-submission. In addition to verbal cues, people communicate their position on the circumplex through nonlinguistic signals such as tone and body language. By understanding how each individual relates to each other along these axises, and to the group as a whole, many social situations become quite predictable.

Triple Zero

This is totally awesome stuff Cram, except I don't have time to read it right now. :mittens:
Ex-Soviet Bloc Sexual Attack Swede of Tomorrow™
e-prime disclaimer: let it seem fairly unclear I understand the apparent subjectivity of the above statements. maybe.

INFORMATION SO POWERFUL, YOU ACTUALLY NEED LESS.

Cramulus

that was a really difficult chapter! It's hard to summarize this stuff, as it's already really dense. My "summary" always wants to grow longer than the source text.

The section on Psychic Kung Fu (my term, not theirs) is one of my favorite sections in the book. The suggest the term Irimi -- "Irimi involves entering deeply around or behind an attack to defuse or neutralize the attack. The concept of irimi teaches one to blend with or enter into an opponent's attack to become one with the opponent's movement and leaving the opponent with nowhere to strike."



the next chapter will further flesh out our model by introducing the term "metabiological organisms". We'll also take a look at 'the ol' Zeigarnik Effect', one of the most useful tools in a memeticist's bag of tricks.

Ob_Portu

Integrating this world view into my model of nonlinear time and telepathy+plus gods spirits and thoughtforms living in our emotional systems and networks was great fun.

Like thoughts or actions occurring after "later" effecting what you do and say "prior".

Anyway love the notes.
I'm not crazy, I'm perturbed.

Triple Zero

I finally got around to reading this! WHooooo :D Great stuff Cram!
Ex-Soviet Bloc Sexual Attack Swede of Tomorrow™
e-prime disclaimer: let it seem fairly unclear I understand the apparent subjectivity of the above statements. maybe.

INFORMATION SO POWERFUL, YOU ACTUALLY NEED LESS.