From: Cory Przybyla (recherchetenet@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Oct 15 2002 - 21:12:48 MDT
--- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> wrote:
> I don't Bloom deserves to be taken too seriously. I
> read all of
> "Lucifer Principle", and it's largely a propoganda
> piece for one
> simple idea--the idea that memetic "superorganisms"
> as he calls
> them can have major influence on history. But his
> scholarship is
> shoddy, and his rhetoric is precise and careful and
> calculated in
> exactly the way one would expect of someone who is
> more interested
> in pushing a point of view than in finding the
> truth.
Would you care to elaborate more upon this? In my
opinion it is also the way in which a scholar would
approach conveying said opinion were it true...
> Perhaps he
> is so afraid if these memetic organisms because he
> himself so
> easily falls prey to them.
in that he is threatened by them who are subject to
them, or that he, himself is mentally subject to their
devices?
> What pretty much clinched it for me was that he
> actually argues
> that conventional medicine out-competed homeopathy
> on memetic
> grounds.
> The fact that homeopathy is complete fraud
> and that
> conventional medicine actually works was apparently
> irrelevant to
> him, since he only saw the memetic competition, and
> completely
> ignored the more rational basis for idea's success.
"...Because the measure of the success of a web of
memes--a myth, a hypothesis, or a dogma--is not its
truth but how well it serves as social glue." -p.108
and in fact he's addressing this on more than just
medicine throughout the book.
Barbaric medicine outsurvived its falacies being
brought to light, there must be a different catalyst
then it's truth. I don't see why this wouldn't apply
to homeopathy. In fact science, many times throughout
history (I assume instances like Galileo are common
knowledge enough not to cite) has been temporarily
thwarted by the ruling class. It's only when it gets
enough force of believers that a change occurs.
and in fact when you say homeopathy is *complete*
fraud, are you entirely denying that eating certain
herbs can in effect help boost the immune system as in
eating healthy always can? Or just the more fanatical
aspects of it?
> I don't see
> any reason to think his opinions on religion are any
> better.
which opinions? Referring above; that he suggests its
success was in forming a social glue? There were many
other comments he had about religion, so in lieu of
presenting them all as questions, I'll end this here...
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