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TED 2008: Humans Are Just Machines for Propagating Memes, Susan Blackmore Says
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Feb 28, 11:49pm
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•http://www.wired.com/science/discover...
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From the page: "Wired: Why is the area of meme study controversial?
Blackmore: I can think of three reasons. One, people misunderstand it. They think memes are the same as ideas.
Two, they are frightened of it. Memetics appears to have a lot of implications that we humans are machines, which people have never liked. Of course we're machines, we're biological machines. But people don't like that. Free will and consciousness is an illusion, and the self is a complex of memes. People don't like that. My view is that if these things are true it doesn't matter if we like them or not.
The third possible reason is maybe it's a load of garbage. But we'll find that out if we do the science and make testable predictions and compare memetics with other theories about culture; we'll find out whether it's true."
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