Monday, July 16, 2007

Rant: Ceiling cat is watching you meme.

Since I first became aware of his existence I was certain that Richard Dawkins was an idiot, or at least a very irate and confused person. Initially I thought this because his idea of "conversing" with religous people involved him yelling at them and telling them they were stupid. Then after watching interviews with him and seeing his written works about religion I began to understand that he fundamentally misunderstood religion, shown through his trite and sophmoric arguments which were below even the standards of a basic Intro to Theology class. I thought, however, that maybe his work in other fields would be impressive and that his performance in the religious sphere resulted from his misunderstanding of religion, and not some flaw on his own part.

Then I read about memes.

A meme is "a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation". Dawkins argued that a meme "propagates from one mind to another analogously to the way in which a gene propagates from one organism to another as a unit of genetic information and of biological evolution." So, when I post, "ceiling cat is watching you masturbate" the "ceiling cat" meme replicates itself into your consciousness from my own (by way of the tubal interwebs) and then from your mind the celing cat meme can replicated again into the mind of another and this way the ceiling cat meme can "survive".

Forgetting for a moment that this is an entirely idiotic and flawed way of talking about ceiling cat jokes, what interests me is how this relates to the idea of God.

The notion of God exists as a means of explaining some of the things which we observe in the world. If a person is sick and they get better in a manner which cannot be explained we say, "God did it." because it serves as an explanation which fits with our chosen world view. Or, if there are other means by which something can be explained one may still choose to say, "God did it" if that fits better with their own world view. The idea of God gives an origin and explanation for a thing which happens in the world.

Now, how is the idea of memes not this exact same situation? We have a situation in which one person says, "ceiling cat is watching you masturbate" and then someone else who hears that says, "ceiling cat is watching you masturbate" to another person. And then Dawkins jumps from this thing that happens to the idea of some thingness, "meme", which explains the thing happening.

Now, arguably, any explanation or name or word will fit that same pattern. But if there is some flaw in utilizing a means of explanation which cannot be supported empirically (god) how is there not some flaw in utilizing a means of explanation which cannot be supported empirically (meme)? If it is problematic for an individual to go beyond empirical evidence in their positing that "god exists" is it not equally problematic to go beyond empirical evidence and posit that there exists this thing, "meme" that exists beyond yet also as part of the phrase, "Ceiling cat is watching you masturbate"? Do not both of these actions (claiming "God" and claiming "meme") attach onto empirical reality some other layer, some depth, some greater degree of explanation which only exists in-so-far as we say it does?

I think they do.

So, remember, Richard,

52 comments:

Roscoe said...

I love that you hate the idea of a meme, but you propigate it non - stop in your hunt for Magic/Star Wars Theory.


At the root of your personality? Exists an angry critic afraid of understanding himself. And that critic has given me years of enjoyment. also some of my own seething hatred. whee!

_J_ said...

And he's doing it poorly.

_J_ said...

"I love that you hate the idea of a meme, but you propigate it non - stop in your hunt for Magic/Star Wars Theory."

Hey, you did that thing he does. "You did this thing which I am describing with this word which means that both my word and the idea used to support my using a word is correct."

Which is dipshittery at its finest.

Roscoe said...

But by his definition of a meme, that is precisely what you DO when you discuss theory. You latch onto specific concepts and propigate them.

Control is self-protecting. Despite the fact that is built upon a thousand assumptions and contexts, you state it as fact. Think back to our epic year long argument about Type 1, and how you towed the conventional wisdom about the format, essentially the memes that you had accepted about the shape of the format. You held to those to the point of declaring the Format to be a particular subset of decks, as opposed to a subset of cards that could be used to build a deck. That, my friend, is a meme. It's nothing more than a conceptual unit.

_J_ said...

"But by his definition of a meme, that is precisely what you DO when you discuss theory. You latch onto specific concepts and propigate them."

Unfortunately for Dawkins the Ontological Argument doesn't work. One cannot define something to exist and have it exist by means of that definition. It is not the case that by telling ceiling cat jokes suddenly this entity "meme" exists as some aspect of ceiling cat jokes.

Roscoe said...

.... meme theory has been around for a relatively decent amount of time, and described a way of looking at cultural tranmission that has been dealt with, without the term, since before you and I were born...

it's by considering Celing Cat Jokes, you have created a new small genre of humor. By telling them, you transmit the genre. That is the creation and transmission of a meme. pure and simple.

_J_ said...

"meme theory has been around for a relatively decent amount of time"

Richard Dawkins coined the term meme in 1976

"it's by considering Celing Cat Jokes, you have created a new small genre of humor. By telling them, you transmit the genre. That is the creation and transmission of a meme. pure and simple."

That is
in no way how memes work or are explained to work.

_J_ said...

"it's by considering Celing Cat Jokes, you have created a new small genre of humor. By telling them, you transmit the genre. That is the creation and transmission of a meme. pure and simple."

That's not what meme's are about, though. The idea of a meme is that it is some quantifiable aspect of some tidbit of popular culture that can be examined in an academic setting.

It's creating an entity.

Roscoe said...

The whole thing is that memes AREN'T measuarble.. they're distinct, but not numerically measurable.

and I'm not sure it is any more creating an entity than Newton discussing gravity creates an entity. It puts forth a model upon which to build discussion.

I mean.. 'crapsakes. Ellis uses them all over Transmetropolitan, and you didn't seethe there.

I know I personally find the marriage of the meme concept to the genetic selection thing to be esoteric and unweildy. but the basic concept of a meme? been around before Dawkins. He coins the term, and specifically uses it for the genetic analogy... but the idea that you can seperate something worthy of study into distinct subunits and track how those shape culutre? C'mon. I can do that with just Jack Kirby art.

_J_ said...

I don't think you read what I wrote.

Roscoe said...

No.. I'm just simply tired of your bizzare streak of reactionary conservatism. Any time you run against something that tries to understand a topic from an angle you don't find interesting, you lay broadsides into it.. and you do it by justifying it after the fact. You've done it on anyone who looks at gaming as a area of study, you do it to Mike, and you're doing it here. You don't like Dawkins. Fine. But you're ripping on the work as a way of ripping at the man. And fundamentally misrepresenting the work to do so. Within the framework of the model of human transmission of concepts he's talking about, of course God is a meme. Every concept that was ever shared is a freaking meme.

_J_ said...

But what he does in his creation of the concept "meme" is what religious people do in their creation of the concept "God".

He's doing what religious people do.

Roscoe said...

No, and here's where you get in trouble. Memes aren't intended to fill a role of God. Memes are an attempt to model and understand how people communicate.
He's no more doing what religious people do than the fuckwit Scottish folks who swear they've found free energy are.
He's putting forth an unverifiable claim and structure, sure. And in his singular case, it's one that seems to have some merit on it's own as a system of examination. But it's not remotely analogous to God/Wizard/Time-travel waving to explain away the scary thunder-fire.

_J_ said...

"He's putting forth an unverifiable claim and structure, sure."

And
That's
What
Religious
People
Do

And
That's
What
He
Faults
Them
For

Roscoe said...

As God as my witness, if I could kill you with my mighty brain energies, I would. But even that wouldn't silence your bitching. You'd become my own personal Jar Jar Ghost.

_J_ said...

I's all blue and sparkley now, YEY!!

YEY!!!

A HA!!!

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