[extropy-chat] Emotional memes, was Elvis Sightings

[Jef Allbright]

Keith wrote:

> Transplanted from the memetics list May 2006 where it generated no
> comment.
> 
> In correspondence with Eugene V Kooin, the author of the comment
> here:
> 
>  >http://genomebiology.com/2001/2/4/comment/1005
>  >
>  > My main point, however, is a tribute to meme selection: the
> fittest will
>  > survive!
> 
> He commented:
> 
> snip
> 
>> . . . it is hard for me to understand how many people, including
>> biologists, can have such a negative attitude (sometimes, almost
>> violently expressed) to this entire conceptual development. I
>> suppose this in itself is a peculiar phenomenon to be understood
>> from the point of view of evolutionary psychology . . .
> 
> Let's try. Examples first.
> 
> I remember with near horror a time when a very senior scientist
> (not in geology) went off on a disjointed emotional rant that was
> scary to behold. (He was shaking with rage.) I was reading *his*
> copy of _Scientific American_ at his house and made some innocent
> comment about an article on plate tectonics.
> 
> A story illustrating this effect to a T was posted here by Aaron
> Lynch back in 2004 and expanded on the Extropian mailing list.
> (That was where the Libertarians freaked out for over a decade
> about the whole meme concept seemingly because of an article I
> wrote for _Reason_.)
> 
> The K/T extinction event meme is another one that inspired high
> emotion against it for over a decade. Even 25 years after the
> 200-mile wide crater was found there are "partisans" who still
> reject the meme.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_Crater 
> Drew Westen imaged the effects in brains for political "partisans"
> but I would bet long odds that the same brain regions were/are
> active in challenged K/T rejecters.
> 
> Usually the memes that get tied up with so much emotion are
> religious or political. Whatever the source, it is clear that a
> wide variety of memes can obtain this kind of binding to emotional
> areas of the brain. Are there features of plate tectonics, the
> "memes about memes" and the K/T event that group them with
> political or religious memes? What other memes classes have
> this binding?

Keith, I think you're referring to binding with sense of self-worth.
Similar to social status but in this case one fears damage to one's own
worth, and all that entails in terms of survival behavior.  Many people
feel that if their beliefs are attacked, then they are attacked.  

A few oddballs actually like to have their beliefs attacked, because
they expect they might gain a better set of beliefs in the process.
Others just enjoy the resulting competition. Most people rarely or never
take a third person view of themselves and react with little no
awareness of their motivations.  If pressed for an explanation, they
confabulate in such a way that they defend their self from (threat of)
change. 

Although we have a greater than normal proportion of novel thinkers on
this list, there's plenty of evidence here of people defending beliefs
as if they were defending themselves.

I suppose the evolutionary drivers for having and defending a sense of
self-worth are already well known.

- Jef