Thought And Belief

Download Thought And Belief full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online free Thought And Belief ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!

Thought Contagion

Thought Contagion
Author :
Publisher :
Total Pages : 210
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780786725649
ISBN-13 : 0786725648
Rating : 4/5 (648 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Thought Contagion by : Aaron Lynch

Download or read book Thought Contagion written by Aaron Lynch and published by . This book was released on 2008-08-06 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fans of Douglas Hofstadter, Daniel Bennet, and Richard Dawkins (as well as science buffs and readers of Wired Magazine) will revel in Aaron Lynch’s groundbreaking examination of memetics--the new study of how ideas and beliefs spread. What characterizes a meme is its capacity for displacing rival ideas and beliefs in an evolutionary drama that determines and changes the way people think. Exactly how do ideas spread, and what are the factors that make them genuine thought contagions? Why, for instance, do some beliefs spread throughout society, while others dwindle to extinction? What drives those intensely held beliefs that spawn ideological and political debates such as views on abortion and opinions about sex and sexuality?By drawing on examples from everyday life, Lynch develops a conceptual basis for understanding memetics. Memes evolve by natural selection in a process similar to that of Genes in evolutionary biology. What makes an idea a potent meme is how effectively it out-propagates other ideas. In memetic evolution, the "fittest ideas” are not always the truest or the most helpful, but the ones best at self replication.Thus, crash diets spread not because of lasting benefit, but by alternating episodes of dramatic weight loss and slow regain. Each sudden thinning provokes onlookers to ask, "How did you do it?” thereby manipulating them to experiment with the diet and in turn, spread it again. The faster the pounds return, the more often these people enter that disseminating phase, all of which favors outbreaks of the most pathogenic diets. Like a software virus traveling on the Internet or a flu strain passing through a city, thought contagions proliferate by programming for their own propagation. Lynch argues that certain beliefs spread like viruses and evolve like microbes, as mutant strains vie for more adherents and more hosts. In its most revolutionary aspect, memetics asks not how people accumulate ideas, but how ideas accumulate people. Readers of this intriguing theory will be amazed to discover that many popular beliefs about family, sex, politics, religion, health, and war have succeeded by their "fitness” as thought contagions.


Thought Contagion Related Books

Thought Contagion
Language: en
Pages: 210
Authors: Aaron Lynch
Categories: Philosophy
Type: BOOK - Published: 2008-08-06 - Publisher:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Fans of Douglas Hofstadter, Daniel Bennet, and Richard Dawkins (as well as science buffs and readers of Wired Magazine) will revel in Aaron Lynch’s groundbrea
Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief
Language: en
Pages:
Authors: David Madison
Categories:
Type: BOOK - Published: 2016-08-07 - Publisher: Tellectual Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

An all-powerful God who permits unspeakable horrors and sent a Son who threatened more to come, forever, to those who don't believe in him. An inspired holy boo
On Belief
Language: en
Pages: 177
Authors: Slavoj Zizek
Categories: Philosophy
Type: BOOK - Published: 2003-09-02 - Publisher: Routledge

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

What is the basis of belief in an era when globalization, multiculturalism and big business are the new religion? Slavoj Zizek, renowned philosopher and irrepre
Brain & Belief
Language: en
Pages: 422
Authors: John J. McGraw
Categories: Body, Mind & Spirit
Type: BOOK - Published: 2004 - Publisher: AEGIS PRESS

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

From its beginnings in prehistoric religion to its central importance in Western faith traditions, the soul has been a constant source of fascination and specul
The Believing Brain
Language: en
Pages: 401
Authors: Michael Shermer
Categories: Psychology
Type: BOOK - Published: 2011-05-24 - Publisher: Macmillan

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

“A wonderfully lucid, accessible, and wide-ranging account of the boundary between justified and unjustified belief.” —Sam Harris, New York Times–bestse