2020-06-26

Once upon a time

Man built for himself places

Now a windbreaker

Elegy II

West Virginia's woods stretch 

 out before us in full green

Full of the things of the wild; 

 mountain and glade, field and stream

Was it you who said "En-

 joy them while they still are here--"

Would man as you had styled, 

 make them to now disappear?

But I see a different 

 vision making its truth known

Once there was a day, 

 when these old woods may've flown;

But that day has passed as 

 darkling clouds without rain

Thund'ring along their way; 

 Never to be seen again. 

 

 

Memetic Quarantine

The recent pandemic has gotten me thinking; viruses are a contagion about which we acknowledge the following: people can become carriers or sufferers (patients, cases) without their consent; their consent or lack thereof does not reduce the danger from the contagion; and further it has been anciently agreed that a period of quarantine (originally, 40 days) must be used to let the sickness run its course to prevent it from spreading from a carrier.

Now, we understand that what are called memes, essentially the kernels of ideas in a simplified form, axioms in the form of slogans or pictures, can spread like viruses. We regard as 'good' the meme that gets involuntarily spread very widely; we revel in its ability to "pwn" new carriers. Of course, we all know that the left cannot meme; and for this reason people on the right blindly support "free speech". 

Yet, although the left cannot meme, it doesn't mean that their ideas cannot spread (and of course, they have spread.) It's merely that they lack the talent to create anything terribly viral, and this condition has ancient origins as well. Yet, merely because Ebola does not have the same ability to spread as Measles does not mean that Ebola isn't a threat. The difference between the left and right in terms of ideas can be viewed this way. 

Indeed, the left's ideas are designed mainly to appeal to a certain set of people and work mainly by saturation and the lack of principled defense. The set of people the left infects are non-trivial; they tend to be either priests or those like priests, men of letters, artists, academics and in general the fashionable sorts of social climbers -- in other words, people looking to be infected by new ideas. 

In terms of containing a disease's spread, new visitors to a region are often quarantined until they are certain the person will not be a carrier of that illness into that region. Specifics vary. Related, there are nations where one, even if one is a permanent resident, cannot really be a citizen, ever. Perhaps their children can be, perhaps not. To the American this is offensive, but see how America is full of foreign gods -- see how she has prostituted herself. In Taleb's language, these places want to limit the ability of a foreigner to enter and be a carrier for the results of their lack of skin in the game -- in other words, the foreigner by being a foreigner has nothing invested in that country and cannot be trusted to act responsibly. This is not accusing them of a crime any more than quarantining someone for a virus is.

But we can go further. A friend of mine told me that although Singapore is still competent, the internet has been a huge vector for the entrance of Western ideas, particularly the pernicious ones that are causing mayhem in the former United States as we speak. What would it take to institute a memetic quarantine?

First of all, the internet between regions cannot be open. It must have borders. For ideas to travel over those borders, they have to be inspected, at least to the point of reason. In other words, the free flow of information on the internet is a disease risk -- the only reason the former USA doesn't care is because it perceives itself as the beneficiary of this infection, much in the way that China perceives itself as the beneficiary of the spread of the crownbug.

China however has not yet the right idea concerning this. Simply banning the word 'democracy' doesn't stop people from talking about it in other terms; it's simply the work of an organization too lazy to really take memetic contagion seriously. Indeed, screeds against democracy are worthwhile to have, but deceptive texts attempting to convince Chinese that "voting" will solve their problems are not. The latter text might never use the word "democracy" (I guarantee it won't; it will stick to approved terms) and no one will read it to determine if it is safe. 

Yet, we can see also the Left attempting this folly too in the USA, where banning is often applied based on simple criteria that not only will cause anger among most people, but will not be effective at stopping the spread of the ideas they wish to silence. I am not willing to correct them on this, of course -- but those of us observing must learn from this, and be a smart Inquisition. This of course has applications to many things, such as pornography, where simply banning explicit images cannot suffice to actually stop pornography, and often gets misused to block mere nudity. We can see this erroneous attitude even among religious conservatives, who would gladly silence all nudity if it meant they could actually take positive action against pornography (I don't totally disagree, granted.)

All new texts must be quarantined until deemed safe.