martes, 3 de marzo de 2009
Never trust the unmedicated
You can never be sure to trust anybody, but I specially recommend weeding out the unmedicated. Although arguably not all people need medication, the chances are that somebody who is willing to accept such flaws in their behavior that can be improved by medicine, is not delusional.
domingo, 4 de enero de 2009
There is truth and untruth
Nietzsche, en voz de Zarathustra, plantea que el bien y el mal no existen, sino que son el motor de las acciones humanas. Lo verdadero es la única virtud.
En esta perspectiva, me enferma lo lejos que nos encontramos de la virtud. No he encontrado una buena traducción de untruth, pero la idea es que además de las mentiras, estamos envueltos en una vorágine de no-verdades.
¿Cómo es posible exigirle al mundo que se dirija a uno con el debido respeto, es decir con la verdad?
En esta perspectiva, me enferma lo lejos que nos encontramos de la virtud. No he encontrado una buena traducción de untruth, pero la idea es que además de las mentiras, estamos envueltos en una vorágine de no-verdades.
¿Cómo es posible exigirle al mundo que se dirija a uno con el debido respeto, es decir con la verdad?
miércoles, 9 de abril de 2008
Pastoreando gatos
Piensen en esta frase. ¿ya?. Pues muchas veces me siento así. No como el pastor, sino como el gato. Esta frase se usa en inglés para designar intentos por hacer que individuos de talante muy independiente actúen de una manera concertada y como grupo. Esto es un gran problema para el potencial pastor de gatos, pero creo que también es un problema para un gato del rebaño. Aunque a veces los pastores resultan ser tiranos e incompetentes (¡cuánto nombre pulula por mi cabeza en este momento!), hay ventajas muy claras en pertenecer a un rebaño. Lo que se puede lograr en equipo, no es la suma de las acciones individuales sino que es algo más. Es imposible para 100 egipcios mover una piedra de 1 tonelada si no lo hacen todos a la vez. Me gusta ser independiente, pero también quisiera ver grandes logros en los que yo haya participado.
Solo una ocurrencia.Why do I still believe in memes?
Memetics is a stillborn science. It never really got of the ground, and now it has been engulfed by the popular media.
Regardless, I still believe that the concept of memes is crucial for understanding much of any cultural evolution. Whenever I see a viral video on YouTube, I wonder why this one in particular has traveled around the world. In most cases it does not have anything that others do not, and it may be even only mildly amusing. I think that no modern science is able to pinpoint the intrinsic characteristics that make this video famous in particular. Had memetics evolved, I am sure we could have at least pinpointed the dynamics that made this one prosper, and not others, much in the same way that Darwinian theory can explain why there are particular species in an environment and not others.
One can speculate that the reason memetics did not evolve into a science is that the persons involved did not fulfill any of the usual traits of a scientist proposing a new theory. Four people are recognized when we talk on the study of memes: Richard Dawkins, Susan Blackmore, Keith Henson and Daniel Dennet. Of these, only Blackmore would be associated mainly with memes, since her book The meme Machine is quite a hit. However, she is not a scientist, but a freelance writer. Dawkins is a very respected scientist, and he coined the term meme, but has chosen not to champion the study of memetics, since he developed the concept only to support his assertion that Darwinian selection acts on any unit of information that replicates with errors, and in which these errors can have an effect on the replicative ability of the new unit. In this context, genetic evolution is only one case of Darwinian selection, but not necessarily the only one.
Henson is an electrical engineer who has written several serious and academic papers on the subject, but has gained notoriety for being imprisoned for his poignant written and spoken attacks on Scientology (and I encourage to read his story, in my view a heart-wrenching miscarriage of the legal system).
Dennet is also widely respected, but as a philosopher of mind. He uses the concept of meme in his essays and books, but memetics as such if far from his main interests.
Bruce Edmonds published the Journal of Memetics, but had to close it three years ago. The only serious and academic writings that can be found today on a subject very similar to memetics is viral marketing. (In fact, the word memetics has 2,300 hits on Google Scholar, whereas viral marketing makes 27,400). The word memetic appears in academia regarding something called "memetic algorithms" which are optimization methods that have nothing to do with memetics.
So, this is the pitiful state of memetics today.
I still can not part with the concept, however, since I keep seeing its principles popping out all over my everyday existence. Specially in the media. When you acquire the meme's point of view, you migrate from a world where a good world is constantly attacked by an evil one to a world where everything is just fitting in its place. I am still outraged at injustice and moved by human-caused tragedy, but they no longer seem to be unexplainable. Even the fact that memetics is something that determines my worldview so profusely and is mostly ignored, it does not frustrate me, since memetics can explain its own demise.
Regardless, I still believe that the concept of memes is crucial for understanding much of any cultural evolution. Whenever I see a viral video on YouTube, I wonder why this one in particular has traveled around the world. In most cases it does not have anything that others do not, and it may be even only mildly amusing. I think that no modern science is able to pinpoint the intrinsic characteristics that make this video famous in particular. Had memetics evolved, I am sure we could have at least pinpointed the dynamics that made this one prosper, and not others, much in the same way that Darwinian theory can explain why there are particular species in an environment and not others.
One can speculate that the reason memetics did not evolve into a science is that the persons involved did not fulfill any of the usual traits of a scientist proposing a new theory. Four people are recognized when we talk on the study of memes: Richard Dawkins, Susan Blackmore, Keith Henson and Daniel Dennet. Of these, only Blackmore would be associated mainly with memes, since her book The meme Machine is quite a hit. However, she is not a scientist, but a freelance writer. Dawkins is a very respected scientist, and he coined the term meme, but has chosen not to champion the study of memetics, since he developed the concept only to support his assertion that Darwinian selection acts on any unit of information that replicates with errors, and in which these errors can have an effect on the replicative ability of the new unit. In this context, genetic evolution is only one case of Darwinian selection, but not necessarily the only one.
Henson is an electrical engineer who has written several serious and academic papers on the subject, but has gained notoriety for being imprisoned for his poignant written and spoken attacks on Scientology (and I encourage to read his story, in my view a heart-wrenching miscarriage of the legal system).
Dennet is also widely respected, but as a philosopher of mind. He uses the concept of meme in his essays and books, but memetics as such if far from his main interests.
Bruce Edmonds published the Journal of Memetics, but had to close it three years ago. The only serious and academic writings that can be found today on a subject very similar to memetics is viral marketing. (In fact, the word memetics has 2,300 hits on Google Scholar, whereas viral marketing makes 27,400). The word memetic appears in academia regarding something called "memetic algorithms" which are optimization methods that have nothing to do with memetics.
So, this is the pitiful state of memetics today.
I still can not part with the concept, however, since I keep seeing its principles popping out all over my everyday existence. Specially in the media. When you acquire the meme's point of view, you migrate from a world where a good world is constantly attacked by an evil one to a world where everything is just fitting in its place. I am still outraged at injustice and moved by human-caused tragedy, but they no longer seem to be unexplainable. Even the fact that memetics is something that determines my worldview so profusely and is mostly ignored, it does not frustrate me, since memetics can explain its own demise.
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