Re: virus: The Discipline of Translation

David McFadzean (david@lucifer.com)
Wed, 02 Jul 1997 11:33:51 -0600


At 09:50 AM 02/07/97 -0700, Tim Rhodes wrote:

>On Mon, 30 Jun 1997, David McFadzean wrote:
>> Unless everyone
>> is way ahead of me on this tgrid stuff, I suggest we start with using
>> factual statements as examples.
>
>"Factual" statements aren't going to diverge much from grid to grid. The
>real interest (and value, I think) is in the areas where meme-sets are
>significantly divergent and the relationships between them.

Maybe factual is the wrong word to use. I mean statements that purport
to describe the world objectively, e.g. "aliens crashed at Roswell",
"the Mafia killed JFK", "reincarnation is real", "ESP is real",
"Jesus is the key to salvation", "time travel is possible", etc., etc.
Obviously (I hope) there is a lot of divergence across existing
tgrids.

Interesting tgrid application: the reason a lot of conspiracy theories are so
compelling is that once the host buys into them even a little bit (assigns a
slightly positive strength-of-belief (S-value) to the thesis) then any *lack*
of evidence become evidence *for* a cover-up. This has a positive feedback
effect on the S-value, so the trajectory tends to accelerate towards very
high Truth values. (This helps explain why once sane people now camp out
near Area 51 watching for lights in the sky.) Hopefully this shows the real
danger of the <cover-up> meme: it reverses the slope of the S-line so that
the hosts become anti-skeptical and their strength of beliefs (at least in
one domain) are inversely proportional to the evidence.

[ Ob. tgrid URL: http://virus.lucifer.com/tgrid.gif ]

>Or maybe I'm just ahead of you for once :-)

No need for sarcasm :)

--
David McFadzean                 david@lucifer.com
Memetic Engineer                http://www.lucifer.com/~david/
Church of Virus                 http://www.lucifer.com/virus/