Re: virus: Re: Rationality

Alexander Williams (thantos@alf.dec.com)
Fri, 07 Mar 1997 14:22:44 -0500


jonesr@gatwick.geco-prakla.slb.com wrote:
> But surely free will allows one to do exactly what one wants. Irrespective
> of memes. If I were to exercise my internal free-will, I could get up
> from my desk, and rampage round the office wielding my telephone at
> people in a threatening manor. Is that a meme? I'm not going to
> do it for the simple fact that I'll get sacked if I do. Is that a
> meme? But I could do it, if external circumstances didn't prevent it.
> What the current piture I have in my head though, WRT to the human OS,
> is that I could never do that unless there were a "telephone rampage"
> meme in my memesphere.

How can you `want' to do something without memes? If your `wants' are
just emergent drives from your memesphere, then surely its not a
seperate epiphenomenon.

You just expressed the idea of running around, beating people with a
telephone. By the definition we've been throwing around loosely, that's
clearly a meme and one the componants of were probably kicking around in
your memesphere before then. Your memes don't necessarily act on each
other in an entirely one:one basis; clearly some, like `illegal acts
will likely get me punished' operate as supressors of entire classes of
memes from thresholding on actual behaviour.

-- 
   Alexander Williams{thantos@alf.dec.com/zander@photobooks.com}
The  Mekton  is a  powerful tool,  both  physically and emotionally.
There is something that  happens to an  enemy when he sees his  home
and family stepped on by a hundred ton metal man.    -- Arkon Verian
====================================================================
Of  all the weapons of the  Empire, the  greatest and most respected
were the Metal Knights.  These Knights had served the leaders of the
Bendar for Generations,   righting wrongs and  bringing  fear to the
Empire's Enemies.  It is  said that these  metal giants were  shaped
like men so  that the alien servants of  Evil would know that it was
Man who defeated them.
                               -- Scribings from the Murian Archives