Dangerous memes | Dan Dennett 

It's unfortunate that the audio for this clip was captured in a Tuberculosis ward.

This man is such a clear speaker, its is a pleasure to listen to him because I understand much of what he says first time through.........I listen again if i there is something dont understand first time.

Memes are an amazing thing. And it kind of makes me sad now that I've come to learn of the scientific concept of memes when someone uses the term "meme" on the internet incorrectly. To many users now memes aren't ideas, they're the jokes and viral videos that spread so well on the internet. Although it's correct to say many of these "viral" concepts are memes, they are not the soul definition or representation of a larger idea, a larger "meme".

I would die for the idea that no one should die for an idea.

I’m very upset about finding this video 14 freaking years later 😂

Ahhh, I love searching random words and looking at the first video about it

this boy's well ahead of the game

This is an extremely important presentation and childish negative comments are an unwarranted distraction from it’s importance.

It sounds like memes aren't the only virus being spread if all that coughing is any indication.

Hoover Dam itself cannot evolve, but there was selection of architects and selection of designs

as always! he is great at whatever he shares with us.

They are entrenched in ideas reflecting the system, a system that abuses and corrupts the truth, protecting overall interest of those who belong to the very same system.

Get this crowd some cough syrup.

Reminds me of John Denner's connecticut guitar clinic

You should watch his other TED talk. He discusses how religion teaches to reject anything that questions your faith as the word of Satan. And thank you for proving his point for us.

Traditions are always being wiped out, it’s the byproduct of progress. I live in a developing country and I can promise you that give the indigenous people a choice between a traditional festival and getting a new iPhone, the iPhone wins almost 100% of the time.

@Vinegar that's not what you said earlier babes. Earlier you accused me of being too verbal. ;D

Sam Harris likes to point out since humans and human relationships as a consequence of brain processes and development, Science could in principle define what is best for an individual and what is worse. Hence there can be a sense of morality that can be derived by studying social interactions between humans in order to accurately convey a valid, universal, moral landscape as seen through the eyes of science.

maymays

You're wrong if you think that science is without values. Science values intellectual honesty. It values truth, it values experiment based evidence, it values peer review, it values skepticism.

In evolution of organisms, (with DNA) all traits are from the replication of an inherited or intercepted section of DNA or RNA. Sometimes there are mutations. This is the physics of information in the biological world. Ideas are information replicated in our brains and communicated through words or media. If all ideas are replicated from somewhere, then there must be an origin to its family tree. How many of your ideas and ideas are unique? How many are replicated from somewhere else?

My copy of "Breaking the Spell" is the same colour as his shirt. . .

He ends with a bit of a dodge. Would he also say that the morally "neutral" investigations into splitting (and then fusing) atoms could ignore the inevitable outcomes? Maybe, maybe not...but he leaves it unargued.

@naturalpreservation True dude, I stand corrected...the way western society seems to be heading...it is entirely possible that your self admitted "meaningless drivel" will be taken seriously in future. After all, forces are already hard at work trying to make people buy into science and religion being on par with each other. Your side does look to be growing. :)

We should all give our lives to the DOE so we can banter inane contradictions as if they were relevant, slowly slipping into the paste of modern micromanagement and drifting into obscurity with him!

That zipper at 1:18

@Vinegar or to continue to pretend I have a problem admitting something I already admitted a while back. yep, I spent a lot of time on RU-vid. Admittedly lately most of it because I chose to reply to your drivel as I find that both amusing and a good exercise, but still, yes indeed, again, I like spending time on RU-vid. There, said it twice again! :)

@goof-chan I will grant you that I should have been clearer in that statement but it hardly changes the essence of my arguments.

How long will it take to recognise that we need an alternative philosophy of “progress” based on solidarity, creative expression and ecological responsibility? Will our conscience reach a turning point before our inconscience overcomes the point of no return? Adam Smith’s theory of the invisible hand, combined with Darwin’s law of natural selection, unintentionally inspired the two main articles of faith upon which modern economics is based on: the greed creed and the belief in the market God.

Thought he was going to talk about the wonderful world of Internet memes....

Please allow me to introduce you to my friend, punctuation.

@BaloneyDetection411 LOL Yes that is a line from his "bio" that continues to amuse isn't it. ;D

Eeeeeh... I think it's harder than 'follow the money'. One could say something similar about a man like Eddie Veddar, even though for him, it's demonstrably the case that he's in it for the music, and that the money is a convenient enabler of his passion. I don't think it's likely that many people do, honestly, want to control everybody else. Especially not consciously. I do. Yes.

@goof-chan I can not believe you are actually going to argue there is no such thing as innate behavior. YES a lot of who we are is innate. Richard Kuklinski killed over 200 people because he had no emotion against murder and so operated for his own survival. Killing brought him money, he would not have done it if he was born with empathy. Eating, why is it a part of culture? Foods taste good. As a society we have developed interesting ways of engaging this pleasure.

@vinegar Thanks hon, yes they are out and about and I will enjoy. Cheers! :)

It's 13 years later, and now more relevant than ever.

Seriously, it sounds like the audience was infected with more than just memes.

14:13 "How can we tell the good memes from the bad memes?" Are they dank?

that moment when the word we all make fun of/with is created by a scientist

That intro music is so fucking annoying.

Beautiful talk. 'There is plenty of room for moral passion once we've got the facts...' Bob Dylan said...'Dont criticize what you cant understand'

Harambe was killed for being a dangerous meme

I really loved the correlation between memes and germs; brilliant and simple all in one. Just like parasites spread quickly and dangerously, so does toxic information; we must be conscious of what the younger generation is fed through the media and from our mouths!

I remember people coughing a lot like this before the COVID 19 pandemic forced them to be more conscious about exposure and sanitation. It was gross and I'm kinda hoping we don't go back to it with the restrictions lifted.

I wish they had given him an hour! He covers so much ground so deftly and it really just gets juicy at the end. I want to talk about what the translation memetically of public health measures is. MORE, need more of the metameme from Dennett! He lays it out so perfectly, so much better than I could ever be able to.

We have evolved into a meme-driven species. Memes reach into our basic biology. Memes that invoke fear work. Memes that invoke anger work well too. Grief works for some. Empathy for others. All the instinctive emotions. Those feelings that make up being a human being being human.

I knew this video would be a breeding ground for religious debate.

"Do memes excist?" stares lost into my reddit feed

I remember working with this gentleman on this project. I had to introduce to him what a meme was. Boy was he excited about caturday. He would just giggle and giggle.

Memes ruined my life.

memes. the dna of the soul.

Did the audience have a joint, all that coughing? good speech..

If you get your knowledge of the term "memes" from Facebook you will not understand this, because pictures with funny captions are not actually memes. The wrong idea that these are memes, however, is ironically an actual meme.

There are only dank and non-dank memes. There is not inbewtween.

I loved Dr. Daniel Dennett, very sad to hear about his passing, I would have loved to meet him, he was my absolute favorite, an intellectual giant, a legend, true sage, heard he was also very kind gentle person, huge loss to civilization, I will watch tons of his lectures in the next few weeks in his memory, I made a playlist of his lectures and interviews for myself to work through, listening to Dr Dennett lectures would be my idea of Heaven 15:38

Today, this talk would be considered offensive...

Am I the only one who's wondering why everyone's fucking coughing?!

This is the most brilliant meme I've ever heard of. I'm "intoxicated" with it, that's for sure :-)

stop coughing ffs!!!

Its an interesting hypothesis but there is a big difference between genes and memes. We have a rigorous definition of what a gene is and we have mathematical formulas (e.g., rB > C for kin selection) that describe why organisms can sometimes behave in ways that seem to be or are contrary to their potential reproductive success. We have none of that for memes. Dennet and other meme advocates admit as much in their books on the topic. In The Meme Machine Susan Blackmore says that no one can define what is and isn't a meme and Dennet says the same thing in his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea. If you can't even define what are and are not examples of some concept X then X is hardly a valid scientific concept. Another way to evaluate the meme concept is to ask how much research has been inspired by it. And the answer is essentially none. The only actual experiments I'm aware of regarding memes were done by Scott Atran (documented in his paper The Trouble with Memes, its available online) and what he did was to show that memes, unlike genes, do not replicate with anywhere near the reliability required for a successful replicator. As Chomsky says on a youtube video the meme concept is an interesting metaphor but that is all it is, it doesn't seem to have much actual validity as a way to understand human cognition.

So long Dan. Your memes continue to spread. Thank you.

Ok, I'm going to be picky and say that all that coughing from the audience is very distracting. It's like dogs barking - one person coughs and sets off a chain of others. Take a throat lozenge for reason's sake!

tfw the memes aren't dank :(

I thjnk when an audience member continuously coughs and sneezed and doesn’t have the courtesy to leave the auditorium, they should be asked to leave. Unbelievably rude and selfish.

We would like the thank Dr. Dennett for coming to the COVID-19 ward to teach us on how memes are infectious.

Just like viruses, memes cannot be completely destroyed! Some can linger for OVER 9000!!! years, in a dormant state...

I find the good memes take a lot more practice, funny thing is its always easier to ruin things than it is to fix them :P

im here for the dank memes

Great talk, but I'm glad it's not 2002, at least in terms of video/audio quality.

RIP Professor Dan Dennett 19 April 2024 💕

Dank memes!!1!1!1!

Ted talks just got a lot more dank with these memes.

Dammit. I thought this was the amazing randy

brain works without logic is a lost. use emotional talks can not help from stupid to clever! but logic can help!

dank memes.

Only came for the Sikh meams tbh

The Lancet Fluke. Also one of god's divine creations? I don't really look forward to spending eternity with the creator of the Lancet Fluke. I hope god doesn't exist. Without evidence, I guess he doesn't.

Interesting analogy between the meme and the virus... I want to hear more of this theory before I can maybe integrate it into my set of values.

I agree on the part where he says that western (american) ideas are basically killing every other culture in the world, but the rest of this speech is so wrong it hurts. Of course Dawkins is a darwinist and an evolutionist, but his approach to human culture has been proved insufficient even before he formulated the idea of "meme". Moreover, Dennett seems to use the word 'meme' simply as a more scientific way of saying "idea", and under the term idea he seems to put a lot of heterogeneous things like religion/ideology and mere thoughts. Treating them like viruses, however a simplification, does say much more on how he sees life and western society than how people and cultures really work.

I guess the summary to this is: don't hate help manipulate.. not only are you helping yourself but others too which makes you have a sense of faith if you are doing it for a better tomorrow.. thats my thought!

D A N G E R O U S M E M E

It sounds like a mere substitution of the word "idea" for another: meme. It's pure nonsense unless they can demonstrate such memes are real entities, like germs, or demons lol

This is probably the most important clip on youtube, explaining suicide bombers' behavior.

Watch this at 1.25 speed at least. You can thank me later.

Every time someone uses a meme to criticize secularism or atheism, just remind them who invented the term.

He is so very boring and long winded ! What is his point ?

@ Vinegar babes..I just love how you now try to be disparaging about dictionaries. Though of course seeing as we have experienced how you do not comprehend the different nuances of one word as defined by said dictionaries and often intermingle them..can't say I am surprised. Merely gratified your displays of inability are becoming more blatant every day. :)

This video is important for all of us. The most important. A lot of question that beggin "why", solved with that.

Scary thought: False ideas are easier to replicate than true ones. So you'd expect false ideas to be represented in the culture in greater numbers than true ones, other things being equal. Well, guess what?

What do you define as Darwinism? Evolution has been proven time and time again, we are highly certain about the family tree history of life and the adaptive properties of populations.

Dediğiniz mümkün eğer fikir kalıtım yoluyla aktarılsaydi pek ala mümkündü dediğiniz.

@ssVinegar ROFLMAO Two times within the hour you post "The Bible is a human document which is inspired by God " and " Written by peoples over time and place inspired by God we'd have a range of chapters (before computers and TV) writing on central themes but still essentially a human product not detached from human perception(s)." Thank you for finally admitting what I have said from day one and you have tried to deny since that day. ( and I just posted to MisappliedRhetoric two days ago) :)

@fabs038 LOL yeah I noticed his little fancy dancing there! As well as his admittance to be a defenseless victim of RU-vid. Where a person in control of his actions would say "I have wasted enough time with .." , He blames the other for the time he spends posting inanities. Now I get why his whole ranting on "RU-vidr life-stylers"..plain old jealousy of those for who responding on YT is a choice rather than something "forced upon" by the mean people disagreeing. ;D

@ssVinegar 1) is it possible for a flying spaghetti monster to exist while and the same time "god" does not? 2) If taken as a serious question I will answer it as soon as you have hit that 10 straight comments replying to what the one you reply to has actually stated sans lies and quote mining and have answered the questions posed to you months ago first. 3) Considering the numbers sweets...a question to which the answer has been ample given. :) me 1 comment - you 4

@MisappliedRhetoric add. The proof they say is in the pudding. :) Here's what he posted on October 7th.. --I've written previously that science can be understood as 'the material reverence' of the Universe (and/or God's creation) and while there is no question that religion and science are different, they are not detached. So the more Dawkins young disciples go on and on about the wonder of science I agree, but it's one of only trillions of human artifacts underlining human exceptionalism. --

@MisappliedRhetoric He may claim he only "got religion" a few years ago but there is no doubt in my mind he comes from a very strict Scottish protestant background and his period on nonbelief was merely the usual teenage rebellion type. Much like say a C.S. Lewis displayed. It is yet another example btw of how big an abuse it really is ..to raise a child in strict religion. Very few are capable of ridding that addling from their mind...ever.:(

@MisappliedRhetoric Rather than see him as a garden variety schizophrenic or some such..we should compare him to the original writers of the old and new testament. I think if you study the characters and speeches of them as relayed in those texts you will notice a remarkable resemblance in their psychology as well as their particular brand of gibberish and "logic" And this time I am not trying to ridicule him . I am being quite serious.

@MisappliedRhetoric Well to be fair..he didn't come straight out and said so..he just claimed to have come up with an equation many have tried but none yet succeeded at. "Time has been a major subject of religion, philosophy, and science, but defining it in a non-controversial manner applicable to all fields of study has consistently eluded the greatest scholars." Until that is, by his own account ( and just today he claimed so again on his own channel)..Tatararum..BIG drumroll...ssVinegar!!!

@ssVinegar Squirmy..not only did you still fail to answer the question, you have fallen into gibberish. "dream about a flying spaghetti monster"? Is that you expressing your personal god then hon? "I thought someone's personal experience wasn't science" again dear...having a conversation with yourself? Because that again has nothing to do with my question. The question is squirmy....."is it possible for a flying spaghetti monster to exist while at the same time "god" does not?" Come now..focus

@ssVinegar ya sad sod...Aside from like I said before,me not seeking the opinions of others and the links being to The Steeldrivers and a documentary Nelson did NOT participate in... .763 favorites on my channel. At least a hundred of those Alison Krauss, roughly a dozen Sarah Jarosz, many Patty Griffin, MCC, Robert plant and Alison Krauss, Tony Rice etc etc etc and ....exactly 5 Willie Nelson videos.