It had to happen one day! The US military have their own memetics project!One Dr. Robert Finkelstein has been apparently been running the project since 2006 under the sponsorship of the department of defense.
Perpare to have all your memes weaponised!
They have a web site and a presentation document, ...which explains their mission. The presentation style of this is rather zany. To quote from it:
PURPOSE OF A MILITARY MEMETICS PROGRAMThe web site also says:
- To develop a new approach to
- Countering terrorists and insurgents beforeand afterthey become terrorists and insurgents: influencing beliefs in a scientific way
- Preventing irrational conflict and promoting rational solutions to national and international problems
- Strengthening the U.S. military in
- Peacekeeping missions
- Psychological operations
- Recruitment
- Training
- To make new discoveries concerning the human brain, cognition, and social networks
The attempt to establish a scientific basis for memetics is critically important. For example, within a suitable memetics framework could be the means to prevent irrational conflict and promote rational solutions to endemic national and international problems. Of course, without safeguards memetics can become a double-edged sword.Right on.
References
- Waage, Erick (2013) Applications of the Memetic Perspective in Inform and Influence Operations
- Finkelstein, Robert and Ayyub, Bilal M. (2009) Memetics for Threat Reduction in Risk Management
Posts
The "Good, Bad, Ugly" rule: Dystopic science fiction in the horror section will be read and implemented as how-to manuals, by politicians desperate for re-election, ~50 years after publication, when the current generation has forgotten about the book.
ReplyDeleteAs a NSA/DoD suggestion, "the best offense is a great defense". Pair up memetic therapy & exo-toxic memes as co-memes of each other. Spread to the American population until gang-membership, prison violence, and school truancy drops to zero, then, after surviving trial-by-teenager (nihilist bastards!), its good enough to pamphlet-bomb the opponent.
Exo-toxic meme is atheist meme, or secular humanist ethics meme; the greater the victims closure, the greater the attacks effectiveness. Gaping-hole power-vacuum filled with renewed self-esteem. Opposing belief (memeplex) is reducto ad flow-chart canned responses, until proven otherwise using Pareto law analysis on empirical evidence. Play perpetually confused yet enthusiastic wanna-be convert with recorder in pocket, until missionary leaves due to aneurism or migraine; masters or doctorate in theater, speech and debate, or rhetoric, mandatory. If canned responses are same 90% of the time by different targets, using different "wanna-be converts" (includes different sexes, skin-colors, sexualities, political groups, disposable assets), canned responses confirmed true.
Suggested additional definitions for meme:
1. "START: viva la viva! BACK TO START" flowchart loop.
2. "invisible hand of X"
3. self-fulfilling prophecy/Ground-Hog Day (film).
4. Syn: tradition; custom; law; culture; religion; "Reducto ad Because (I Said So)"; Reducto ad "I'm the Parent"
PS - I don't like the fact a PR rep from the gov't will probably see this automatically; its indiscriminate, resulting in too much "by-catch", causing analysis-paralysis, but it life-hacks the email-tree for offering suggestions, and side-steps the legions of goal-keeper secretaries... so I am dyspeptic about it.