On Tuesday 27 November 2007 01:58:23 Noah Slater wrote:
> I think that you
> could sum this up as "having strong opinions and sticking by them is
> wrong." which is clearly brain-dead.
No, the way of summing it up is "having strong opinions and sticking by them
is fine, but repeatedly banging on about it to other people who understand
what you're saying by don't agree with you is unlikely to change their minds
(since you're trying to force them to change their minds) and they'll end up
more annoyed by you (and your ideas) than be willing to accept you (and your
ideas".
*It's an analogy*, using memes as the starting point. As I said I felt he'd
pushed the analogy one step too far[1], and pushed the terminology too far
into the offensive, but found the point of the analogy interesting, even if
you disagree with it. Evangelists *do* force their memes on others. It does
cause a visceral reaction in many. What you call this is another matter, but
people shouldn't forget that the right to speech is balanced by the right to
say "I disagree" *and be justified in doing so* . (If it holds for one, it
hols for many)
[1] The full analogy of "genes & mutate during the process of sex, how do
memes reproduce & mutate, and if we use that how could the various
concepts relate." 2 paragraphs from 4 pages of text.
I'd assumed that people would understand the concept of "analogy" and
"meme".
Michael.
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