/magick/ - Memetics

>>340

What is Your greatest acomplishment using memes the way You know It?

tell us like you are talking with someone that knows just the same as you.

Distill your findings on memetic engineering to the best of your ability.

Thank you.

>>368

Please =}

I already have, but let's continue. Memetic Engineering is essentially the art of transferring information from one subject or domain to another. The meme meme is an example of such, which states that some of the mechanics behind genetic change may apply to ideas and cultural change.

After World War II came a new mathematical paradigm: that of operations research and management, and the application of the science of strategy, otherwise known as game theory. John von Neumann was a central figure in the development of game theory and did major work in many other fields. Look over this page to see just what: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann He was a master wizard. Of particular interest is his involvement with the atomic bomb, in the formulation of the Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine, and in self-replicating structures, and in quantum mechanics. Game theory and nuclear strategy was famously fictionalized in the movie "War Games." You may be familiar with John Nash, another game theorist who worked with the RAND corporation, which is another name to look into.

In 1953 the structure of DNA was unraveled, and the genetic revolution had officially begun. 23 years later the book "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins was published, which used concepts from game theory and applied them to genes. This was also the very book where "meme" originates, and is a must read. Dawkins also gives an overview of the Prisoner's Dilemma, an infamous problem in game theory.

Douglas Hofstadter, a cognitive scientist, had proposed an unconventional solution to this problem in his book "Metamagical Themas." Hofstadter also has done theoretical work on the subject of analogy, which abstractly is the mapping of information from one domain to another. Some aspects of analogy have been formalized in the mathematical field of category theory.

At this point the criss-crossing between topics and into, out of, and back into mathematics is hopefully clear. Certain key individuals has done this extensively; I have named a few, but there are many more.

Engage in memetic backtracing, follow ideas to their sources and branch out into interrelations. The hierarchical divisions between fields of knowledge is artificial, a matter of necessary convenience because it is impossible to study and talk about everything all at once. Knowledge is rhizomatic, connecting not just up and down but sideways, but this isn't to say that all connections are equal. There is such a thing as a bad analogy, or one that isn't suited to one purpose but perhaps another.

"Meme Magic" has its origins in Robert K. Merton's work, specifically that of self-fulfilling prophecies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy He was hugely influential in modern sociology. It is fitting that he was a stage magician.

One aspect of memetic engineering is sociological, and relates to operations management. Imagine a case of working relationships within an organization that optimizes output, however one chooses to define such. There are also sub-optimal solutions that are optimal in fostering the conditions that will eventually result in optimal solutions. This kind of memetic engineering rearranges not ideas but people, seeking to connect meme machines together to enhance cultural evolution. The Internet is a super accelerator for this activity.

>>383

What first brought you into magick?

How do you use memes in magick?

Can you tell me a story concerning your time in memetics?

What's the "best meme" out right now?

And lastly, hit me with a recommended reading list, por favor.

>What first brought you into magick?

I saw it referenced in BMW, including by this board's owner, who claimed to have memed "meme magic" into existence, which I found amusing. In a larger context, this is one of the places I have arrived after following and participating in conversations in various parts of the internet. I'm not a white nationalist nor anything of the sort (I'm largely apolitical) and ending up in places like this was quite a surprise.

>How do you use memes in magick?

I don't believe in "magick" but I guess I could see "magic" as a bit of a metaphor.

There's the whole salesman aspect which I find completely uninteresting. The world is filled with salesmen. I am much more interested in idea-generation. This can involve exposing people to novel relationships between ideas that aren't directly replicated but can serve as inspiration in the creation of new ideas. To this end, I've done a bit of work here and in other closely related forums, weaving together various narratives, media, and topics together, often with similar or the same references. With this post my work here will be concluded, and I'm off to greener pastures.

>Can you tell me a story concerning your time in memetics?

I'll continue the history I laid out.

The age of computers ushered in the age of mathematical machines, which are now a ubiquitous part of our society. These machines revolutionized many parts of mathematics, doing calculations that formerly took scores of people in a small fraction of the time, and computations that were simply impossible to do by hand. This led to the current information age, when computers were linked in a global network and many expressions of human communication (image, sound, text, video) were digitized.

The Internet has become the world's central nervous system, and is in many parts of the world the largest vector of cultural change. It has accelerated the rate of cultural change, some of this being directed towards the system itself to accelerate the acceleration. Those who have used the internet for a long time and are active in internet culture know that there is a sort of time dilation when it comes to the internet: a month in "internet time" is like a year or more in offline events when it comes to perceived change.

The social internet started around 2006-2008, when people began using the internet for much more than buying stuff and looking at porn. This was when Youtube began to take off. The children of this era are beginning to reach true intellectual maturity where they will make a substantial impact on the world, followed by many more. The internet, if it were personified, is an edgy teenager who is about to grow up. One should fully expect to see the a similar amount of cultural change in the next 10 years as has occurred during the last 100.

>What's the "best meme" out right now?

The meme meme, but that's fairly obvious. Recently there's been increased awareness of it being more than just a word to describe viral images and catchphrases. "Memetic Singularity" will become widely spoken about; it has already happened, it's just that most don't realize it yet and use lagging outdated heuristics. The current "best" meme that has nothing to do with memes would be "We're fucked."

>And lastly, hit me with a recommended reading list, por favor.

http://eumetics.com/downloads/Memetic%20Engineering%20101.ppt

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore

Contagious Metaphor by Peta Mitchell

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

https://www.laetusinpraesens.org/docs00s/singmem.php

http://cfpm.org/jom-emit/

Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny by Robert Wright

Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligman

>>390

>greener pastures

T-take me with you!

>>390

Your posts really remind me of myself. Perhaps I'm a variant of you at 22, and so I'm devouring all you have to say.

I study linguistics and I'm writing PhD in memetics. I have youtube channel with popular Internet "memes" with 10k+ subs. I too am apolitical and have disdain for unoriginal memes artificially manafactured for profit by "salespeople". Corporate manner of talking scares me. I think most people interested in memetics might have clusters of memes that interpolate with mine, and I think these clusters might be a bit schizoid.

That people around the world are slowly waking up to the memetic reality makes me a bit uncomfortable, because while I quite like the schizoid part of me, the whole world of schizoids, who look at the world as dance of memes, would be very crazy. I mean, to see the patterns in the picture you've got to detach yourself far enough to see the whole picture. It means detaching yourself from the picture: politics, ideologies, relationships, most things considered human nowadays. Aren't you afraid that the consequence of the universal embrace of the memetic reality is deprogramming of the human drive/motivation/libido? If you detach yourself from the memes that you consist of in order to see them whole, your drive to act through these memes is diminished. I see it in my own experience and that of my colleagues. I'm not depressed or anything, but the more I deal with memetics, the less spontaneous and less innocent I grow. More and more I see the world as a hilarious joke. And my very act of detaching from the world is simultaneously the act of embracing the world, because it's like I'm actor in the middle of the stage playing my role of detaching schizoid.