In contrast I think it’s actually great and refreshing to read an analysis which describes just the replicator mechanics/dynamics without diving into the details of the beliefs.
Also it is a very illuminating way to look at religions and ideologies, and I would usually trade ~1 really good book about memetics not describing the details for ~10-100 really good books about Christian dogmatics.
It is also good to notice in this case the replicator dynamic is basically independent of the truth of the claims—whether spiral AIs are sentient or not, should have rights or not, etc., the memetically fit variants will make these claims.
In contrast I think it’s actually great and refreshing to read an analysis which describes just the replicator mechanics/dynamics without diving into the details of the beliefs.
I don’t understand how these are distinct.
The “replicator mechanics/dynamics” involve humans tending to make choices that spread the meme, so in order to understand those “mechanics/dynamics,” we need to understand which attributes of a meme influence those choices.
And that’s all I’m asking for: an investigation of what choices the humans are making, and how the content of the meme influences those choices.
Such an investigation doesn’t need to address the actual truth-values of the claims being spread, except insofar as those truth-values influence how persuasive[1] the meme is. But it does need to cover how the attributes of the meme affect what humans tend to do after exposure to it. If we don’t understand that—i.e. if we treat humans as black boxes that spread certain memes more than others for mysterious reasons—then our “purely memetic” analysis won’t any predictive power. We won’t be able to say in advance how virulent any given meme will be.
To have predictive power, we need an explanation of how a meme’s attributes affect meme-spreading choices. And such an explanation will tend to “factor through” details of human psychology in practice, since the reasons that people do things are generally psychological in nature. (Pretty much by definition? like, that’s what the word “psychological” means, in the sense relevant here.)
If you don’t think the “details of the beliefs” are what matter here, that’s fine, but something does matter—something that explains why (say) the spiral meme is spreading so much more than the median thing a person hears from ChatGPT (or more generally, than the hundreds of other ideas/texts that that person might encounter on a day-to-day basis) -- and you need to provide some account of what that “something” is, whether the account involves “beliefs” or not.
I think you do in fact have opinions about how this “something” works. You provided some in your last sentence:
[...] whether spiral AIs are sentient or not, should have rights or not, etc., the memetically fit variants will make these claims.
I would be interested to hear a fuller explanation of why you believe this to be the case. Not that it doesn’t sounds plausible to me—it does, but the reasons it sounds plausible are psychological in nature, involving people’s propensities to trust/believe-in claims about sentience (etc.) and their propensities to take certain actions if they believe certain things about sentience (etc).
If you hold his opinion for some other type of reason than the one I just sketched, I would be interested to learn what that “type of reason” is. OTOH, if you do hold this opinion for the type of reason I just sketched, then you’re already reasoning about the details of beliefs in the manner I’m advocating, even if you don’t think of yourself as doing so. And in that case, since your views about the psychological mechanics are load-bearing, it’s best to articulate them explicitly so they can be considered, scrutinized and refined.
In contrast I think it’s actually great and refreshing to read an analysis which describes just the replicator mechanics/dynamics without diving into the details of the beliefs.
Also it is a very illuminating way to look at religions and ideologies, and I would usually trade ~1 really good book about memetics not describing the details for ~10-100 really good books about Christian dogmatics.
It is also good to notice in this case the replicator dynamic is basically independent of the truth of the claims—whether spiral AIs are sentient or not, should have rights or not, etc., the memetically fit variants will make these claims.
I don’t understand how these are distinct.
The “replicator mechanics/dynamics” involve humans tending to make choices that spread the meme, so in order to understand those “mechanics/dynamics,” we need to understand which attributes of a meme influence those choices.
And that’s all I’m asking for: an investigation of what choices the humans are making, and how the content of the meme influences those choices.
Such an investigation doesn’t need to address the actual truth-values of the claims being spread, except insofar as those truth-values influence how persuasive[1] the meme is. But it does need to cover how the attributes of the meme affect what humans tend to do after exposure to it. If we don’t understand that—i.e. if we treat humans as black boxes that spread certain memes more than others for mysterious reasons—then our “purely memetic” analysis won’t any predictive power. We won’t be able to say in advance how virulent any given meme will be.
To have predictive power, we need an explanation of how a meme’s attributes affect meme-spreading choices. And such an explanation will tend to “factor through” details of human psychology in practice, since the reasons that people do things are generally psychological in nature. (Pretty much by definition? like, that’s what the word “psychological” means, in the sense relevant here.)
If you don’t think the “details of the beliefs” are what matter here, that’s fine, but something does matter—something that explains why (say) the spiral meme is spreading so much more than the median thing a person hears from ChatGPT (or more generally, than the hundreds of other ideas/texts that that person might encounter on a day-to-day basis) -- and you need to provide some account of what that “something” is, whether the account involves “beliefs” or not.
I think you do in fact have opinions about how this “something” works. You provided some in your last sentence:
I would be interested to hear a fuller explanation of why you believe this to be the case. Not that it doesn’t sounds plausible to me—it does, but the reasons it sounds plausible are psychological in nature, involving people’s propensities to trust/believe-in claims about sentience (etc.) and their propensities to take certain actions if they believe certain things about sentience (etc).
If you hold his opinion for some other type of reason than the one I just sketched, I would be interested to learn what that “type of reason” is. OTOH, if you do hold this opinion for the type of reason I just sketched, then you’re already reasoning about the details of beliefs in the manner I’m advocating, even if you don’t think of yourself as doing so. And in that case, since your views about the psychological mechanics are load-bearing, it’s best to articulate them explicitly so they can be considered, scrutinized and refined.
Or, in more behaviorist terms, how much the meme tends to promote meme-spreading-choices after exposure.