X-Message-Number: 28431 From: Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 10:21:45 EDT Subject: memetics? Anthony and many others question the validity or usefulness of the notion of memes and memetics. I haven't made a serious study of it, and don't have any strong opinion yet, but I am not aware of any body of successful predictions made through memetics. My philosophy is based in part on empiricism, meaning that if it isn't useful, forget it. Of course, usefulness takes many forms. The goal of life is to feel good, hence entertainment is a valuable commodity, as well as one of our biggest industries. Memes have clearly contributed to the joy of gossip--as have, to be sure, many brands of nonsense. R.E. Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=28431