dmb said to Ian:
Yea, I know. Meme is just a word you use. Like "social darwinism",
"intelligent design","suspension of disbelief" and other terms in common
currency, you use words without understanding what they really mean, where
they come from, what they imply.
Ian replied:
...I never use a word I don't understand (the way I understand it) - when I
ask someone else what they mean by the same term, I'm not indicating that I
don't know what it means (to me) or that I don't have access to
dictionaries; I'm suspecting there may be a misunderstanding based on those
other non definitional meanings implied by the baggage and context. The
reason I jibe at people who haul out definitions in response to such
questions - I'm asking for dialogue - I already have links to Websters,
Wikipedia and OneLink etc. I prefer humans to dictionaries.
dmb says:
Where do you think dictionaries and definitions come from? My complaint
about your use of such phrases as "social darwinism" and "intelligent
design" is not just that it fails to conform to dictionary definitions but
that it defies what they mean as they are used by actual people in actual
history. I think we all know that words mean what they mean when people use
them and I'm saying that you seem to be unaware of this usage. Thus my
history lesson from Hofstadter's book on social darwinism and Arlo's lesson
on intelligent design. Sorry Ian, but you don't get to decide what words
mean. You can only decide to use them properly or not.
Ian said:
Fine, if you see me "abuse" a meaning (in your opinion) please continue to
say so - it will always be accidental (or incidental if I'm playing
rhetorical games) - but please don't insult my intelligence by assuming I
don't know where to find a dictionary definition.
dmb says:
I'm sure you can use a dictionary and I didn't mean to insult your
intelligence on that account. I mean to insult your intelligence on account
of your apparent obliviousness to the cultural, historical and philosophical
meaning of these phrases. I'm sure there are more examples, but these are
among the most severely abused terms that I can recall off the top of my
head, Sir Droolsalot.
Ian said:
...You have this "mechanistic" baggage associated with memes (and genes I
guess). I don't deny the mechanisms, they're real enough, in their place.
But equally I do not say such mechanisms are "the
explanation" for the whole emergent behaviour across the MoQ levels...
dmb says:
I'll remind you that I was responding to your comment about social
darwinism, which you said you were comfortable with at any level in the MOQ.
That's when I chimed in to point out the history of that idea, one that
would prevent a person from being comfortable. And when you tried to use
"intelligent design" while denying any belief in an intelligent designer, it
became apparent that you were oblivious to the history of that phrase as
well. To adopt and use such phrases in the context of discussing the MOQ
executes an uncomprehendinb act of semantic infiltration by the MOQ's
enemies, namely scientism and theism. This is extemely objectionable and so
I do the natural thing. I object to it.
Fianlly, Ian said:
Clearly such differences in meaning are in both of us - hence the need for
dialogue. I don't "blame" you for misunderstanding me - I seek to understand
the misunderstanding and reduce it.
dmb says:
Well, here we can agree cause I don't "blame" me either. I don't even think
its a matter of me misunderstanding you. I think it's just you
misunderstanding the phrases you use, including but not limited to these
specific examples. None of us can see all the implications all the time, but
Jeez. You've adopted ideas from bible thumpers and fascists without even
realizing it. That's pretty bad, especially in this context. Maybe that's
what should be reduced.
Believe it or not, I'm trying to be relatively polite about this. I mean,
for whatever it's worth, there is a much nastier version of this post that
I'm not going to write for the sake of civility. So if I seem a little too
openly contemptuous for your tastes, maybe you can take some comfort in the
knowledge that it could be a lot worse. Suppose I drank a six-pack of beer
and let loose, for example. That would probably be enough to make a drunken
Squonk look reasonable by comparison. But I wanna believe this is not a rant
and that I'm not picking nits. I'm stone-cold sober (it's just past noon)
and my complaints are aimed at huge bugs in your rhetoric. How can your
comfort with social darwinism be squared with your sympathy for intelligent
design, for example? They BOTH contradict the MOQ as much as they contradict
each other. This is the sort of incoherence one gets when one does not care
about the meaning of words. (Or perhaps it comes from living in Alabama for
too long.)
dmb
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