Is information alive? Memetics, show that information replicates, evolves and mutates.

No one has any thoughts? Seems like most people here only like to deal with viral memetics. Given how viral information can be, it stands to reason that information can be used as a virus and can infect people. Anyone who has ever been mistreated, abused etc can see this in action. A negative action caused by an individual causes the person at the receiving end to think negatively and also act negatively.

A couple of examples of virus like behaviour.

'Violence is an infectious disease," says Gary Slutkin. He's a man who knows his diseases, having battled tuberculosis in San Francisco, cholera in Mogadishu, and AIDS in Uganda as an epidemiologist for the World Health Organization.

Kill the thought. Slutkin's public-health instincts kicked in: Why not approach violence as unhealthful behavior that can be changed, like smoking? In Chicago, in Rwanda, and now in Iraq, the problem is that the unthinkable--shooting a neighbor, shooting a child--becomes the social norm. The disease-causing agent is not a microbe but a thought: "He looked at my wife, so I should shoot him." Immunize against the thought, and cure the disease.

[link to health.usnews.com]

Treating Violence as Infectious Disease

Cure Violence reverses the spread of violence by using the methods and strategies associated with disease control—detection and interruption, identifying individuals involved in transmission, and changing social norms of the communities where it occurs.

Violence, much like the great infectious diseases throughout human history, has been ‘stuck’ without lasting solutions. This isn’t because we don’t care enough, or because we don’t have enough resources devoted to it—but because we have had the wrong diagnosis. This has led to ineffective or even counterproductive treatments. Like infectious diseases, violence can be understood better scientifically, and the result must be a new strategy.
[link to cureviolence.org]

Can Murder Be Tracked Like An Infectious Disease?

"We looked at homicide as an infectious disease," Zeoli said in an interview. "To spread, an infectious disease needs three things: a source of the infection; a mode of transmission; and we need a susceptible population."

The researchers studied every homicide that occurred in the city of Newark, N.J., over a period of a quarter century, from January 1982 to September 2007. In all, Newark had seen 2,366 murders in that period, a rate of homicide some three times as high as that of the general U.S. population.

The researchers tracked down the time and location of every single murder. They plugged the data into a software program that has previously been used to track infectious diseases: When you put in the geographical location and the time of infection of each victim of the infectious disease, the program creates a model that shows how the epidemic is spreading — and where it might go next.

"We hypothesized that the distribution of this crime was not random, but that it moved in a process similar to an infectious disease, with firearms and gangs operating as the infectious agents," the researchers wrote in a paper they published in the journal Justice Quarterly.

The analysis showed that homicide spread through Newark very much like an infectious disease. The value of tracking murder in this fashion, Zeoli said, was not just to let police know where murder was happening — police already track hot spots and direct resources to those areas — but to make predictions about where homicide might spread next, based on the path of the epidemic.
[link to www.npr.org]

Last Edited by Plasmare on 12/10/2012 05:26 PM

Another good example of memetic viruses are advertisements. Designed and created to spread/infect people and to stick in their minds as long as possible.

There are two types of information, the simple explanation would be truth and lies, truth exists in reality and lies do not. Information which reflects reality is truth, information which does not are lies. True information exists naturally in the universe, there is no false information, that just cannot be. It is only humans who have "created" lying and introduced false information into the world.

If one was to look at this from a religious point of view, truth is god, lies are satan, a concept which everyone is familiar with. So technically we created satan, if you were to view this from such a point.

this is really interesting

the power of words to transmit a thought form through any media
and have that thought form then self create , self sustain and transform
consciously and subconsciously -
from one point of inception
largely untraceable and largely unstoppable

super coolio


thank you

Should also mention that language also evolves. Culture, beliefs, ideas, etc, these are all memes that people pass on to each other. Ever wonder why suggestion is so powerful? Why people like Derren Brown can "hypnotize" and manipulate people so easily, with nothing more than words?

Ever wonder why so many people kill others over beliefs? If a group of people believe something, the only ways anyone can stop them from believing is to kill them. Or join their belief system, just like Mohammad did to start Islam. Hence all the religious wars.

Ever wonder why it's getting harder and harder to find anything unique or interesting to listen to, or watch or read? Most people are just hosts for memes, walking around spreading them like a virus. They don't have original thoughts, they just mimic and copy others.

I've read, 12 years ago, the selfish gene and a couple other books about memetics. One thing that has bugged me for a while now is pop cultures acceptance of the word "meme" as a novelty basically. Totally dumbing down the importance of the "discovery" of this huge subject. Almost makes you think there is something built into memetics that protects itself from being fully understood. Ha.

Information is the cause, source and the root reason for all life. Life is so that information may spread.

It really seems to me that information, whatever it really is, could be "alien". There is no real singular definition of what information is but I like to think of it as bits of reality. I find myself asking, why however. Why does it spread? Does it have a purpose? Information is in everything, not just life. Electrons, atoms, radiation, everything has information, our senses and brains just put a small slice of it together for us.

Information is God, eternal (in both 'directions') and everywhere in all things as you said, all is alive.

Information cannot be destroyed, our scientific method has allowed us to discover that much. But saying it's god doesn't make things any clearer. On the contrary, it shows that we don't know or understand what information/god/whatever is. Despite what people believe, believing and knowing are totally different. One is based in reality, the other is not.

Memetics suggests that information spreads from person to person, like a virus or a disease. And this is true, why they call a video or meme "viral". A while ago I found an interesting article that discusses a group treating violence is a disease and having great success. This is their website; [link to cureviolence.org]

And it's not just violence, I suppose it can be any thought, look at comet ISON doom and trends and fads. I'm still trying to figure out why, what makes certain things go viral and not others?

People do not want view things like racism or an elitist attitude as a meme that is alive and controlling them for it's own gains.

They want to believe that it is their idea and based on their own logic and conclusions.

Memetics make people very uncomfortable basically.

It's not a large field of study... memetics is like magic so I'm sure there are people out there who know a lot more about it but not in the way I see it. Look at Derren Brown and other people who use psychological manipulation. Everyone does it, but not everyone is good at it and not everyone does it to get what they want.

I never actually knew what a meme was until I looked into it, I never understood memes or liked them but I wanted to understand why so many people around me were always talking about them. Isn't it also weird how it just appears seemingly out of nowhere? But it surely has a point of origin...

Does anyone remember the game you play in primary school where the teacher tells the first student in a line a sentence and then each student recites the sentence and then everyone gets to see how much the sentence changed over time?

Was that an example of information being "alive" possibly?

If you spread that out over a large society and especially with the Internet, it's a huge topic.

Yes, I see all beliefs, including racism as memes, and they are. They get passed on from person to person. And strange how you say controlling them because as scary as it is, I was also thinking about that a lot. It's true a meme can only exist as long as people have it in their minds. It's like a book I read by Terry Pratchett once, Small Gods, where a god only existed as long as there were people who believed in it. As far as memes controlling people... that would be like that planking thing a while ago? What happens to a person who is "infected" with multiple memes? Surely everyone still has a choice whether or not to act on their thoughts but you may be right in the way it makes them behave.

Isn't it weird how almost impossible it is to actually truly create a new idea or thought instead of just mixing and mashing old ones? I'm frankly not even sure humans are capable of true creation in that regard.

Kind of. A "powerful meme" replicates cleanly. Meaning it's retelling seems to stay pretty much true to the original idea no matter how many brains it travels through.

Think about the harlem shake. That was a meme. A powerful but short lived one.

Look into the lucifer principle by an author named bloom.

In theory some one with a mastering of the meme could change the world with a well placed sentence on the internet, placed in the right place at the right time.

I tried to do a simple memes 101 type thread once on here.
It's too complicated and strange for most people to grasp at first i think.

Here it was called Chinese whispers, no idea why. But yes that's an example of it evolving, as it does with linguistics and etymology. Languages evolve all the time, they die and new ones are sometimes born.

Also don't forget, there's two types of information, the information that reflect reality aka truth and information that does not aka lies. As much as I enjoy the entertainment of a good movie or story it's basically a lie with bits of truth. I've noticed that people who lie a lot tend to be a little more crazy too, don't know if it's related but sure seems so.

Have you read this book?

[link to en.wikipedia.org]

Highly recommended.

Does lying destroy one's ability to decipher the truth?

I was thinking about this in terms of trolling on the Internet.

Could a person write so many troll posts using troll logic that it could warp their brain and they could start using troll logic all the time, uncontrollably.

It could be the same process with lying.

These are examples of how people are confused about an important truth of life. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. You live by the sword, you die by the sword. You make a practice of lying, you lose touch with reality, irreparably.

I've known people who lie seemingly continuously and their thinking skills are atrocious and their disconnect from reality is unreal.

I have, many years ago. Thanks anyways.

I've always somehow managed to avoid memes, sometimes on purpose but usually it just happens, doesn't draw my interest. It's so difficult to find any real and useful information on memes and everything relating... I came across the term memetics in a Neal Stephenson sci fi novel, something about the Sumerians using words of power, I thought he just made it up but it turned out memetics was real and I was intrigued.

Etymology is the study of the evolution of words basically. So there's a lot of information about memes scattered about. The idea of living information came from Phillip K Dick's Valis and if you look at the commonly accepted requirements for the classification of life, replication, evolution and mutation are the main criteria.

I've also known people who lied constantly and it affected me, it got to a point where I can barely stand to be around most people. And yes it affects them even more so. As you said they lose touch with reality and beliefs are the biggest memes of all, whether they be racist or religious or even santa clause. Lying is socially accepted now, so as not to hurt people's feeling or whatever the reason. And yes, eventually over time they can't even see what is real anymore and hence why so many people seem to be insane to some degree.

I will look into the book you mentioned, seems interesting, thank you.

I've been studying them for over a decade. The book i mentioned is written by the man who was in charge of Micheal Jacksons marketing.

He knows a thing or two about controlling an idea and how to make it spread.

He talks about memes specifically in that book and it is written like a clever and funny scientific explanation of memes and similar concepts.

Religion also fits the definition of a virus:

A virus
1) an organism that cannot grow or reproduce apart from a living cell.

2) it invades living cells and uses their chemical machinery to keep itself alive and to replicate itself.

3) It may reproduce with errors (mutations); this ability to mutate is responsible for the ability of some viruses to change slightly in each infected person, making treatment difficult.

4) they cause many common infections and are also responsible for a number of rare diseases

Religion can not survive without a host. It replicates itself, mutates and spreads from person to person. Extreme infection causes mental anguish, fear, break downs, etc.

And what is religion? But a set of words built upon an idea or belief.

You won't be let down by that book. It's a mind-blower, it's the best book I've read, hands down. I think it's available on the net for free btw.

It's more than words because it plays on psychology and real spirituality and all kinds of thins.

Even if it wasn't, I have a knack for finding information or it finding me, it's really hard to tell sometimes. Time for me to sleep but I'm glad I found people who share this interest of mine, please share anything else you can on the subject. I have a voracious appetite for information that interests me.

"What is hip?"

Ignore what the middlemen market, that which is stolen from the poor.

Woodshed or wormhole, burn it down.

Starve the beast.

Can behaviors be meme's too?

I believe that information, whether you call it memes, themes, fads, whatever is somewhat of a life form, and intelligent.

Also, there is information, messages, that are "dumped on" populations that influences those susceptible to think or act in certain ways, I believe.

A strange thing happened to me several years ago, and later I met another woman who had exactly the same experience:

I woke up in the middle of the night, I had been dreaming. My thoughts were flooded with the name "Barack Obama", like leaves falling from the trees in the fall. Somehow I knew it was a name. I thought "Who the hell is this Barack Obama?" It was rather irritating. Then later I heard the name again when he became a presidential candidate.

This is not a normal thing for me, I do not "hear voices" or anything like that.

Where did this information come from? It obviously was not something meant just for me, as at least one other person experienced that same thing. Different city too, hundreds of miles away.