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--- politics:ideasarealive [2022/03/14 17:47] – [Things that make copies of themselves] Owen Mellema
+++ politics:ideasarealive [2022/03/18 19:57] (current) – [The problem with ideology] Owen Mellema
@@ Line 22: / Line 22: @@
 Which leads us into my next point,
-==== Ideas are <del>like</del> viruses ====
+==== Ideas are like viruses ====
+This might be a confusing thought for some of you. How can a non-physical thing be like a virus, a physical object? The truth is, however, that ideas *are* physical objects. The brain is a physical organism, made of physical neurons, and those neurons (and the connections between them) are what make up ideas. That doesn't change the nature of what I'm saying, but it might help some of you get more comfortable with what I'm speaking about.
+Ideas are like viruses. They want to reproduce, and they evolve to get really good at reproducing. They reproduce when someone, who has the idea in their head, communicates some information about the idea to another person, who then, without realizing it, constructs a working copy of the idea, capable of repeating the process with another individual.
+Here's an example. Imagine a classroom full of students. Each student has a notebook. One student in the room passes a note to the students adjacent to him in the room, with this message: "Tear out a sheet of paper from your notebook, and write this message on it. Then, give the note to a person sitting next to you." imagine also that the students obey any instruction given to them. The note will therefore propagate itself throughout the room, despite being completely inert.
+Of course, the critical assumption there is that humans are completely obedient, which is not true. In order to propagate, the idea must employ various strategies to cause humans to propagate it further.
+==== Positive and Negative Ideas ====
+I divide all ideas into two categories. These categories are not cut and dry, but are pretty good, in my opinion.
+The first category is //positive ideas//. Positive ideas are ideas that propagate because they are useful. They are the equivalent of tools. The way these work is that one person will see another person doing something, and will decide to copy them. A person might see someone using a hammer, for instance, and then copy them.
+("Usefulness" is anything that improves a person's life. So, a game is a positive idea, as is a song, a recipe, etc.)
+The second category is //negative ideas//. These are ideas that spread by other any other means besides objective benefit.
+Now, positive ideas could be described as being "pro-human". That is, positive ideas "want" to improve human's lives, as this is how they propagate. On the other hand, negative ideas often grow to become "anti-human". That is, any benefit provided by the idea is tangential to it's purpose of propagating by any means necessary, meaning that they become vestigal and eventually get shaved away as cruft.
+===== Application to politics =====
+==== The problem with ideology ====
+Political Ideologies are almost always negative ideas. That's not to say that it is wrong to hold political opinions, or even that it is wrong to be politically active. It is only through the efforts of dedicated groups of political activists that positive change can occur within the government. For example, if there were no political activists during the Civil Rights movement, would there have ever been a change in the way that society treated black people?
+What I am more focused on is a particular type of political community, where likeminded people slowly transform from individuals with distinct opinions into nothing more than a mouthpiece for a vague set of ideas, sacrificing their own quality of life for no discernable benefit to themselves. These groups of people are growing, entrapping more and more people in their ranks. While most people can see this form the other side of the political spectrum, few are willing to introspect and consider that it is also happening to them.
+It seems to me that there are two types of politically active people. On the one hand, you have a group of people that is more interested in finding solutions, and achieving their goals, than squabbling over pedantry. On the other hand, you have a group of people that believe it is locked in mortal combat with another group of people, who distorts reality such that it favors them, and that care more about "scoring points" than either being objectively correct or achieving goals.