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> Memetics, Knowledge Skill
Kanada Ten
post May 12 2004, 12:25 AM
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Memetics is the study of contagious ideas. More specifically, Memetics studies how ideas propagate from one host to another and the properties of those ideas. Viral ideas are called Memes and can be designed, though the greatest are often spontaneous.

As a knowledge skill, Memetics grants complimentary dice spot Membots (those under the influence of a powerful Meme, using or resisting Psychology, creating or understanding mental Advertising and Marketing techniques, forming Influence statements, and so on. GM discretion.

[ Spoiler ]
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blakkie
post May 12 2004, 12:36 AM
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...ninety nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety nine bottles of beer. If one of those beers should happen to fall...ninety eight bottles of beer on the wall...
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Kanada Ten
post May 12 2004, 12:40 AM
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Interesting divergence there. Memetics would of course include knowledge of well known memes and such.

...ninety nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety nine bottles of beer... take one down pass it around... ninety eight bottles of beer on the wall...
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Dakhran the Dark
post May 12 2004, 12:57 AM
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ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!!! :cyber:

FIRST POST!!!11! :silly:

On a more on-topic note, memetics is an interesting pursuit, but how would this assist a 'runner? Perhaps it would be minorly useful to a Face, but typically this would be more on the lines of something megacorp marketroids would employ. For example, the master memecrafter at NERPS. :D
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Arethusa
post May 12 2004, 12:59 AM
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So, who's up for some Stand Alone Complex?
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Kanada Ten
post May 12 2004, 01:13 AM
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QUOTE (Dakhran the Dark)
On a more on-topic note, memetics is an interesting pursuit, but how would this assist a 'runner?

Memetics could be used to aid infiltration of a cult, baiting a target for long term goals, and of course creating a cult: programming and deprogramming of subjects.

Memetics could also be used with Etiquette, Interrogation, Intimidation, Leadership, and Negotiation though I would require knowledge of the target[s] before hand.

Johnson's could use Memetics and Psychology to find and recruit susceptible runners, while an assassin lays out the bait a target cannot refuse.

Runners would most often use it as a defense to protect themselves from Meme targeting and spotting Membots. But they can also make great team slogans and better control their street rep. Though that could get out of their hands very easily...
:vegm:
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Person 404
post May 12 2004, 01:18 AM
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QUOTE (Kanada Ten)
[ Spoiler ]


(Emphasis mine). I don't know about these guys, but I've not met military personnel whose survival was "inconsequential in their own minds."
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Kanada Ten
post May 12 2004, 01:22 AM
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I agree it is an exaggeration if not an outright error. Military studies seem to indicate that ideals and abstract concepts mean nothing in actual combat. The things that keep personnel functioning are fear of failing their comrades and fear of death.
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Ancient History
post May 12 2004, 01:33 AM
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Kanada, have you been reading Neal Stephenson again? :P
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Arethusa
post May 12 2004, 01:37 AM
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On a more applicable note, I'm completely uncomfortable with this being used mechanically in game. This is pure roleplaying stuff, and it's one thing to take it as a knowledge skill to flesh out a character, but it's pretty bizarre to apply the concept to a set of rules.

And, yes, military personnel who don't prioritize their personal survival are generally pretty damn rare.
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Kanada Ten
post May 12 2004, 01:52 AM
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QUOTE
This is pure roleplaying stuff

Memetics? Um, no. Memetics is not yet a science, but it was invented by Richard Dawkins before discovered by RPG's.

QUOTE
Kanada, have you been reading Neal Stephenson again?

No. I have never read any cyberpunk, Stephenson, Gibson or any of the others usually mentioned here.

[edit]
QUOTE
This is pure roleplaying stuff

I get it, you mean the players have to roleplay it and game mechanics be damned. Let me find that quote by Derek about doing the same thing with firearms...

[edit again!]
Ha HA!

Roleplaying is wonderful and a great compliment to mechanics. I look at the Negotiations example and apply it to everything.

This post has been edited by Kanada Ten: May 12 2004, 02:06 AM
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lacemaker
post May 12 2004, 01:53 AM
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Interesting idea,

I don't know that mimetics would have all that much to say about the propogation of ideas as distinct from doctrines like psychology and marketing - in the same way I guess that most of what we've been able to say about genetics until recently (when we developed the tools to interface with genes directly rather than just looking at their expression) drew from botany and zoology.

I don't know that there's a uniquely "mimetic" way to start a cult - a knowledge of what makes ideas appealing, memorable or likely to propagate seems to me to involve more hands-on disciplines, where as mimetics seems more of a way of viewing phenomena, kind of like the relationship between theology and athropology...

I do like the idea of runners engaging in their own viral marketing campaigns though...
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Ancient History
post May 12 2004, 02:00 AM
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QUOTE (Kanada Ten)

QUOTE
Kanada, have you been reading Neal Stephenson again?

No. I have never read any cyberpunk, Stephenson, Gibson or any of the others usually mentioned here.

You should perhaps try Snow Crash then. Don't consider it a serious work, just enjoy the ideas that percolate through it.
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gknoy
post May 12 2004, 02:00 AM
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QUOTE (Dakhran the Dark)
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!!! :cyber:

All your arcology is belong to Deus.

;)

As for Neal Stephenson . . . I must confess that I greatly enjoyed every one of his booksthat I've read (Snow Crash, the Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon (tied w/ D.A. as my favourite I think), and even Zodiac) ... which makes me feel all the weirder for not wanting to read his latest work, which is set in pre-fire england (1600s?), and issupposed to span a lot of europe and history...

What's weird is, even the books of his I didn't think I'd like (Zodiac) I liked, tho not nearly as much as the others ... but this one , from the reviews I've read, is especially dull, pointless, or something . . . which if I wanted, I'd go read Jane Austen. (No offense to Jane Austen readers, I do like her work, but it's a completely different type of book.)

I probably should get it once it's in paperback.
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Arethusa
post May 12 2004, 02:07 AM
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QUOTE (Kanada Ten)
[edit]
QUOTE
This is pure roleplaying stuff

I get it, you mean the players have to roleplay it and game mechanics be damned. Let me find that quote by Derek about doing the same thing with firearms...

That's right. Because firing a gun is a very similar process to exercising one's knowledge of a sociological topic and applying it to the situation at hand. Good call.
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Kanada Ten
post May 12 2004, 02:09 AM
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It is exactly the same actually. I have no gun skills but my character does; I likewise have no social skills but my character does. Therefore, the character should be able to shoot great, but can't use social skills worth a damn. Yeah! That makes sense!

Shouldn't one's character be able to do things far beyond the players ability? The roleplaying aspect is not dismissed, but forbidding a character from performing something because of a player's lack seems unnecessarily harsh. Roleplaying already grants target modifiers and karma points, how much more important need it be?



This post has been edited by Kanada Ten: May 12 2004, 02:26 AM
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lacemaker
post May 12 2004, 03:11 AM
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OT: I'm about a third of the way through quicksilver and finding it moderately heavy going, but I'd still be happy to recommend it - milleu aside Austen is not a good comparison (and even the surrounding society is radically different) - this is sci-fi literature set at the birth of science and you shouldn't let the setting put you off. A lot of the first book is scene setting, but I gather the second book released recently, makes it all worth the effort.

On Topic: Unless I'm misunderstanding the suggestion I think Mimetics is the wrong title for what you're trying to do - it's simply too distant and academic an analysis to be useful even in situations where the propogation of ideas is important - trying to use mimetics deductively (as opposed to inductively) is like being cornered by a hungry animal and saying "right, I'll use my knowledge of evolutionary pressures on behaviour to determine what it's going to do next" - genetics will have insights into that kind of question, but they won't be the sort to be useful in a hands-on situation...

I think mimetics works well as a cool name for a more down-to-earth psychology of ideas/marketing kind of skill - and if that's what you meant then I apologise for splitting hairs about nomenclature - but that's radically different to what real world "mimeticists" would actually do with their skill...
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Dashifen
post May 12 2004, 03:43 AM
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My google-fu is off tonight and I can't find any real information from a university or research journal on mimetics tonight. Linkage? I don't know enough about the topic to debate herein, however.
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Kanada Ten
post May 12 2004, 03:45 AM
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Meme is the term to search for, BTW.

http://www.memecentral.com/

QUOTE
    *  Memes are the basic building blocks of our minds and culture, in the same way that genes are the basic building blocks of biological life.

    * The breakthrough in memetics is in extending Darwinian evolution to culture. There are several exciting conclusions from doing that, one of which is the ability to predict that ideas will spread not because they are "good ideas", but because they contain "good memes" such as danger, food and sex that push our evolutionary buttons and force us to pay attention to them.
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Connor
post May 12 2004, 03:46 AM
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WAAAAZZZZZUUUUUPPPPP!!!!!! :D

Google-Fu

Selected Links:

Journal of Memetics

Memetics Papers
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Kanada Ten
post May 12 2004, 04:05 AM
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Having mulled over Lacemaker's point (and then realizing that Arethusa meant the same thing, right?), I think Memetics is useful in the same way as Genetech is useful to characters. Not in the middle of combat but in understanding the field and seeing it used in practice.

Memetics: complimentary to Marketing, Advertising, Programming/Deprogramming Psychology, and Sociology skill tests. It makes a great conversation piece, too.
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lacemaker
post May 12 2004, 04:38 AM
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I'll buy that- I think it works fine as a complementary background knowledge kind of skill, both in game and IRL.

Just to draw one more needless distinction, I think it differs form Genetech simply in that it's currently (and, we appear to assume will be in 2060) a much less developed field - genetech is able to look at the mechanics of gene propogation at the molecular level, that is proximate causes. Memetics is only really at the level of general principles, that is ultimate causation - kind of where genetech was two or three decades ago. I don't know how it would advance, though I guess oyu could argue that BTLs and skillwire technology have pretty profound impacts on our understanding of how ideas actually form in the brain...
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blakkie
post May 12 2004, 04:45 AM
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QUOTE (Kanada Ten)
...ninety nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety nine bottles of beer... take one down pass it around... ninety eight bottles of beer on the wall...

That is a stituational adaptation option of that meme. Which one gets propagated depends on how thirsty the host is. :)
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Arethusa
post May 12 2004, 04:48 AM
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Memetics is useful knowledge, yes (though I feel it's worth pointing out that it's still very young, and, on a lot of levels, extremely loose theory). For a runner, not so much, or, at least, not much more than most academic background skills (discounting the hard sciences, like physics and chemistry).

But that's not really my concern. My issue is with claiming that having the number on your character sheet should automatically make up for any lapse in knowledge you may have. Good roleplaying, like good acting, requires a personal knowledge of the character and the character's fields of knowledge. Certainly, no one expects an actor playing, say, a mathematician, to be deeply versed in math, but he can't expect to give a compelling performance if math is completely and abjectly foreign to him, either. In RPG terms, a player who knoes absolutely nothing about guns but takes Pistols 6 has made a terrible mistake, because his portrayal of that character will always ring false. He must at least understand what pistols are, what they do, and generally how they do it to portray that aspect of the character well. Simply having numbers on a sheet does not make up for roleplaying, and simply because you have Etiquette 6 doesn't mean you should be able to bumble your way through everyone around you without ever being forced to take responsibility for your idiotic actions (for clarity's sake, Kanada, this is not specifically a reference to you) simply because your Etiquette skill clearly reflects more social grace than you are humanly capable of mustering. That is wholly insane, just as it is insane to expect your GM to bail you out of a bad situation simply because your character has an Intelligence of 6 and should be able to come up with a suitable solution while you cannot. That's my point.

Of course, if you're playing a simple game with roleplaying largely excised, little of this applies, and you're practically playing a pen and paper video game, but if you're doing that, what use could you possibly have for Memetics or Psychology or American History or whatever as a knowledge skill anyway?
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Tzeentch
post May 12 2004, 04:49 AM
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GURPS Transhuman Space has rules for Memetics that can be adapted. In particular, the newly released Toxic Memes sourcebook has some "meme creation" rules and a boatload of strange beliefs and ideas you can plug into Shadowrun with a bit of fiddling.
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