my conclusion about Why Memetics Failed is that the paper I read was wrong about the cause of the current doldrums that its found in
rather than the reason given, memetics is currently in a rut because it was dominated by people trying to do too much fake biology and not enough AI and linguistics and structuralist anthropology
additionally, because it was dominated by biologists, the philosophical underpinnings of their """science""" were extremely problematic in terms of how it led them to _do_ that science
@beka_valentine Yeah similarly semiotics seems to have a lot of "media/arts" people which also makes it have less of a focus on mathenatical or actionable models
and where you say "actionable" one might also say "empirical" in the sense of "explainable and falsifiable based on observations in the world"
(Not that y'all already don't know this, and)
An awful lot of evopsych stuff is _not_ empirical and seeks to support the status quo with scientism (not science)
I'm gonna have to research what lakatosian means
But yes, "empirical" is fraught, across many fields and I apologize for my half-assed effort to encode my contempt for evopsych scientismist[0] quislings into the language of philosophical thought
[0] "adherents of scientism" would be "scientists" but that term is already occupied
Do you have a recommended entry point?
I find "Falsifiable" useful but problematic, especially when communicating with people with different sets of presuppositions, like in social sciences, linguistics and psychology
@trochee The Method of Scientific Research Programmes is the best explanation of his views but its a bit long
@trochee or maybe its methodology. whatever, youll find it
@trochee one cheeky part of this that I like is when he points out that einstein's conclusion about the aether is "obviously its real" lol
@mauve so so true