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Old 09-09-2014, 01:20 PM   #11
sir_pudding
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Default Re: Is video game violence memetic?

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Originally Posted by jeff_wilson View Post
I don't see that as correct. Your post may carry some memes within its content but that doesn't mean they are necessarily reconstructed as the post is read. It may depend on other memes that the reader does not have. For example, a reader with crap English as a Second Language Skill could plod their way though your post and perhaps even transmit it to another person by sounding out the unknown words and reading it aloud but without themselves comprehending the content and thus failing to host any meme replication.
Yes, by "read" I meant "read with comprehension" not "see some characters in a language you don't read".
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Old 09-09-2014, 01:33 PM   #12
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Default Re: Is video game violence memetic?

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Originally Posted by jeff_wilson View Post
I don't see that as correct. Your post may carry some memes within its content but that doesn't mean they are necessarily reconstructed as the post is read. It may depend on other memes that the reader does not have. For example, a reader with crap English as a Second Language Skill could plod their way though your post and perhaps even transmit it to another person by sounding out the unknown words and reading it aloud but without themselves comprehending the content and thus failing to host any meme replication.
Memetic typhoid Mary? Metaphor or not, I love the concept.
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Old 09-09-2014, 01:53 PM   #13
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Default Re: Is video game violence memetic?

"If memes are real, this post is made from them, and by reading it, they are replicating."

Is good prose. It scans. It's creepy. It's simple.

"If memes are really discrete replicators, and culture is obligated to be memetic, then this post is therefore composed of memes. A reader, who fully comprehends this text, who is able to mentally verbalize these words, and has functional short term memory, must therefore replicate these memes at least once by translating them lexically and storing them in short term memory. You are therefore, if you fit the above criteria, now replicating these memes."

Is terrible prose. It lacks poetry or emotional impact.
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Old 09-09-2014, 02:17 PM   #14
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Default Re: Is video game violence memetic?

Well, we are affected by what we experience. Sometimes minimally.
But pure objectivity is not possible for any human or anything we influence or create.
A beautiful sunset is just as much external manipulation as any ad.
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Old 09-09-2014, 02:24 PM   #15
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Default Re: Is video game violence memetic?

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A beautiful sunset is just as much external manipulation as any ad.
The sun is a ball of gas, it has no intention, it isn't even really literally "setting". It certainly isn't manipulating you. Any memes* you carry about sunsets that cause it to have an emotional impact for you originated in primate brains sometime in the last few hundred thousand years (including possibly your own).

*If memes are the obligate real discrete replicators of culture.
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Old 09-14-2014, 06:35 PM   #16
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Default Re: Is video game violence memetic?

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Yes, by "read" I meant "read with comprehension" not "see some characters in a language you don't read".
That's not my objection. People that can read a language don't always fully engage with the content they read. Even people who are considered otherwise extremely literate may not recognize the existence of subtext, for instance.
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Old 09-16-2014, 01:48 AM   #17
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Default Re: Is video game violence memetic?

Start with the real?

Violence is a form of entertainment justified through cultural transmissions. The state is violent to others therefore, to be correct, the state must pass on through cultural links that violence is good and there is also bad violence that can be defeated by good violence.
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Old 09-16-2014, 02:13 AM   #18
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Default Re: Is video game violence memetic?

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Violence is a form of entertainment justified through cultural transmissions. The state is violent to others therefore, to be correct, the state must pass on through cultural links that violence is good and there is also bad violence that can be defeated by good violence.
I disagree with so much of that. So many assumptions, all stated as fact...

The fact that the government is uninvolved in the creation of videogames - or, indeed, the vast majority of entertainment - is merely one problem with that analysis. Then there's the question of whether the state shapes or is shaped by cultural influences, not to mention the huge problems with the first six words: "violence is a form of entertainment" - um, no!
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Old 09-16-2014, 10:24 AM   #19
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Default Re: Is video game violence memetic?

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That's not my objection. People that can read a language don't always fully engage with the content they read. Even people who are considered otherwise extremely literate may not recognize the existence of subtext, for instance.
Isn't that just a transcription error - i.e. the meme mutated? If the reader fails to understand the same thing you did, but exposure still changed something in his brain, then something got transmitted, and it's akin to the original meme, but not the same.

I suppose if it only loaded into his short term memory and then vanished without making any durable changes you could call that reading but not replication.
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Old 09-16-2014, 11:23 AM   #20
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Default Re: Is video game violence memetic?

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Isn't that just a transcription error - i.e. the meme mutated? If the reader fails to understand the same thing you did, but exposure still changed something in his brain, then something got transmitted, and it's akin to the original meme, but not the same.

I suppose if it only loaded into his short term memory and then vanished without making any durable changes you could call that reading but not replication.
Yes, communication is the analog to transcription. So successful communication is successful transcription. If you don't "get" the subtext, then those memes didn't transcribe, but the text still did. If you are reading these memes, and comprehending what you read, then they are transcribing in your thoughts.
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