agamemnonymous

joined 2 years ago
[–] agamemnonymous 54 points 1 month ago (12 children)

About a century before, Merriam-Webster cites the first recorded use in 1928.

[–] agamemnonymous 1 points 1 month ago

You argued it's "the most useless idea ever committed to text", that's a bad take. No one claimed that it's a rigorous scientific theory, that's your failure to understand the premise. It's a useful analogy, like the useful observation that electricity in a circuit behaves in many ways like water in a pipe, or that Einsteinian spacetime behaves in many ways like a rubber sheet. Are these analogies "useless" because electricity isn't in fact water, and space-time is not in fact rubber? Or would a self-righteous PhD make themselves look supremely foolish by attacking these illustrative analogies as useless because they aren't rigorous scientific theories?

Having read most of your sources here, they do not support your conclusion. I see opinion pieces, confessions of the authors' personal inabilities to imagine the granularity of a singular meme, lamentations over different authors' conflicting definition of a meme, and smug conflation of memetic behavior and the substance of consciousness, but not claims that the idea is useless. Non rigorous, over extended, inconsistently defined, sure. But useless? Much less the most useless idea ever committed to text? That is your own myopic hyperbole.

[–] agamemnonymous 5 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I read Selfish Gene, like, a few months ago.

[–] agamemnonymous 5 points 1 month ago (7 children)

Hard disagree. I don't think you actually understand the premise.

[–] agamemnonymous 2 points 1 month ago

How is babby formed?

[–] agamemnonymous 20 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Stop motion is definitely finer than 10cm/event. Time wizards have a tendency to do Inceptions and run macros. They let the spells fractalize to buffer out cataclysmic accelerations, it's covered in Chronomancy 103.

[–] agamemnonymous 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Memetics in action.

[–] agamemnonymous 2 points 1 month ago (3 children)

The difference between a gene and a virus is method of reproduction. The genetic model, I think, is considerably more apt than the viral. Memes combine with other memes, they have memetically distinct "offspring". I think even that distinction is useful.

[–] agamemnonymous 19 points 1 month ago (14 children)

Nah, this is a bad take. Memes are a sociological analog to genetic genes. They're units of cultural information that mutate, recombine, and evolve in the cultural space the same way genes mutate, recombine, and evolve in the gene pool. It's a poignant observation about the behavior of viral cultural concepts that transcends merely describing their existence. The parallel to genetic behavior is a useful observation that, to my knowledge, was not really acknowledged before he coined the term.

[–] agamemnonymous 19 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Calling sex a true binary is strange for a talented biologist, intersex people definitely exist.

Transgenderism is a bit different though. Personally I think gender is a repressive, outdated social norm, and I disagree with transgenderism precisely because it reinforces this obsolete notion. Anyone should feel free to dress, act, and identify however they please, including but not limited to any body modifications they wish. But "switching" your identity to align with another set of stereotypical expressions only reinforces those stereotypes.

I can't even see the point in "fitting in", because those who care about how you express yourself aren't going to accept you as transgender anyway, and the people who are going to accept you aren't going to care if your expression matches the stereotypes they're used to.

I dunno if that's his objection because paywall, but I can certainly understand opposition to transgenderism that isn't actually intolerant of transgender people themselves.

[–] agamemnonymous 3 points 1 month ago

The core problem is that right wing ideology is inherently authoritarian, right wing voters find their figurehead and toe the line. Left wing ideology is inherently individualistic, left wing voters find their personal ideologies and seldom compromise. The Right huddles into their big tent while the Left endlessly splinters into feuding sub-factions.

[–] agamemnonymous 5 points 1 month ago

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 

Matthew 6:5-6

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