Quote from: David Lucifer on 2003-01-08 12:56:45   

OK, let's say that someone advocates killing Christians and backs it up with the argument above. We think it is a bad idea, and want to convice them that it is a bad idea. What is the better approach and why? 1) Your argument is fallacious for the following reasons... 2) Your conclusion breaks the golden rule, which supercedes reasoning.

I feel strongly that 2 is the better approach, because

a) people who are susceptible to hate memes do not generally look deeply enough to be talked out of them. This seems to be just a fact of life.

b) We have not even established that hate can only come from fallacious reasoning, unless we have Empathy as an axiom superceding reasoning in the sense that the reasoning starts with the axioms. (Maybe somebody can establish it; I have not seen that yet.)

c) I think I meme-complex around the golden rule and complementary concepts can be built using parables and other means that is totally convincing.

Now we are moving toward the main point I want to make and the thing that excites me about memetic evolution in the context of the Internet. I.e., I think the objections you raise above have a solid response and that response is the whole reason why I am excited about this subject.

I have too much work pressure right now to write it up; it will have to wait, maybe until next week. Also, I feel that my postings have been too unorganized and thus seem to demand more of a time and effort commitment from readers than they have any real reason to demand. So I want to think more about how to structure my response before I do.

It may be, rather than a long posting, more of a step-by-step socratic Q&A. We'll see.

Concerning the subject of art, could it not be said that art falls under the category of empathy? Much of the art in the world was created because of the artist's attempts to understand a feeling, whether specifically confined to one person or whether they were attempting to understand the feeling in general.