[mallowdram]

Mimetics and memetics are not similar.

Are they Molotov cocktails of an affective war? No, they're tapeworms that users don't understand the functionality of. Molotov throwers OTOH know the precise function of what's in their hand. The intents of either are inaccessible.

[gsf_emergency_2]

Mimetics -> Mo-tails (well, the way Thiel conceives it as the incendiary distillate of religions, one makes it from premium North American vodka; as an improvement over SF&F tropes)

Memes -> AKs (esp. as brandished by Afghans/Nepalese etc)

Tapeworms: too little intentionality. Memes can be enjoyed, admired, zeroed, maintained, in the field. But they don't have to be.

Moreso than analogies, better tools needed (PC with the "autonomy" of memes?)

https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almana...

[mallowdram]

We have to keep in mind that mimesis (Auerbach) and mimetics (Girard) are narrative theories of how storytelling literature engages the senses and memory. As there's no sci validity to either approaches, there's no falsifiable outputs that can be tested. They have nothing to do with reality, as words have nothing to do with thoughts.

Mimetic thought (Merlin Donald, eg) is an evolutionary phase of behavior that's been segregated from episodic, mythological and analytic. But that neither Girard or Auerbach have made theoretical distinctions in their literary approaches, they're invalid.

Memes are as yet unverifiable units of behavior that may have scientific value. The jury is still out.

[gsf_emergency_2]

Thanks. I've obviously not thought about mimetics very much, I've just been more interested in figuring out how Thiel, specifically, wields them as a tool of influence (for now, in the limited sphere of SV intellectuals/rightwing politicians)

-- which I thought was comparable to how a swath of people orientate themselves with respect to (such entities as TV tropes and) memes.

Anyways. Memes are much more alive than mimetics; tapeworms are an adequate metaphor in that sense

[mallowdram]

It's a hallucination, as it's derived in placing thoughts about things into other brains and then "acting on them", which is nothing like what brains do and how our behavior manifests.

So it's imposing a narrative on reality. As we're at a particular threshold in neuroscience where the contents in brains are known to not be about things, that ideas like desire, intent, motivation are seen now as false retrofits from folk psychology, challenging cog-sci, CS and AI as to their entire relationship to intelligence AND we're at the memetic-culture chaos throwing a monkey wrench into the general narrative culture, Thiel's approach is like a last hurrah for coding/value that probably feels like for him a new beginning.