Yet, through organized society, we have tamed some of its worst elements.
How am I stating it as a fact, when I explicitly qualified the remark as an opinion?
I don't think that's the only difference. I think you should look into the research on symbology and it's relationship to propaganda, demagoguery and in-group behaviors.
Honest question: why are you so angry right now?
I don't believe this analogy is operative at all. I have already conceded that not all memes are bad. I also support nuclear power, even though nuclear technology can be used for bad, too. Your analogy is really just a straw man, as conceived.
Literally don't know how you're drawing these inferences.
These platforms are going to make the privacy issues related to advertising and tracking cookies seem like a pedestrian concern in comparison.
I'm not debating they are powerful. I think my original point implicitly concedes that. I'm arguing they lower information content in the discourse, tend towards framing things in black and white, in-group and out-group.
I'd say lies and misinformation travel effortlessly through memes. So we disagree strongly on this point.
I wouldn't argue any of the claims you're making about the role of money, here. And I would suggest that none of this is incompatible with my prior point.
Okay. But you could literally apply this defense to demagoguery itself, and then argue demagoguery is a good thing on the same basis.
And I'd probably argue that most political memes are a form of demagoguery in any case.
I don't agree that any conception of money ameliorates these concerns. I think all such claims are simplistic and reductionist, and an example of the fallacy of the single cause.
So is a lot of pernicious propaganda. Not sure why this is a salient point. It's not like I'm arguing they should be outlawed or something.
He’s very smart. I have incredibly frustrated disagreements with him (metaphorically that is, as I’ve never met him). He also has significant blind spots.
But I actually think he has valid insights into human nature. Even if I don’t take the same lessons from those insights into the political sphere as he does.
It can be. I think Marxist realism was a force for bad. It really does depend on what the normative goals behind the expression are.
Not it’s not *always* bad. It’s a well-known, evolutionarily selective survival trait. And pretty good one when you consider the landscape of human experiences 20,000+ years ago. I think in the context of a technologically advanced, organized society, it starts to have destabilizing effects that when coupled with our capacity for self-destruction, is a deeply concerning thing.