The Atomic Bomb is the outstanding fact of our time-- not just as a scientific triumph and military weapon but as a symbol of what our so-called civilization has brought us to. As Emerson remarked, "Civilization crowed too soon." How shall we meet the menace of modern scientific war-- not the menace of atomic attack but the menace of the bomb itself, of the ugly fact of its existence? The fission of the atom is an intellectual achievement of the first order.... we can understand what Emerson meant when he declared that "pure intellect is the pure devil". Over the entrance to Plato's Academy at Athens was the inscription, "Let none ignorant of geometry enter here." If I could choose a similar inscription for the entrance of all the colleges and universities int he world today I would pick that great sentence of Montaigne's "All other knowledge is hurtful to him who has not the science of honesty and goodness."

WANTED: a force for good as potent as the atom bomb is for evil, a force, preferably, to complete the analogy, that produces a vast result out of a chain reaction of little forces each of apparently negligible amount-- a result, however, not of disintegration and destruction, but of integration and creation.

It its widest manifestation life itself as revealed in the process of organic growth is such a force and it is not chance that the bomb came into existence for the express purpose of defeating that process, as if it recognized in it its natural and opposite enemy. For what is cellular proliferation but a chain reaction of millions of tiny forces each contributing to a tremendously disproportionate total result of integration and creation? This chain reaction of the tiny into the mighty may be observed, though on a smaller scale, in the mental and spiritual life of man even more convincingly and often at a more rapid tempo than in his physical development....

Goddard goes on to explain this mental and spiritual force in detail. I simply cannot do his work justice with with excerpts from the rest of the essay. You'll have to go read it. It may be the most important thing you ever read.

It was republished in a collection of essays in 1971, so imagine it's still under copyright. Hrm.... I'll take a look at what the collection says when I get home.

[1] http://www.unc.edu/~unclng/public-d.htm

If the corollary to virus is meme, than what is the corollary to t-cell?

We can't engineer real t-cells, but wouldn't it be fun to engineer their idea-space equivalents?

Snopes.com, for example, is sort of a t-cell that can attack and kill a lot of memes, if the infected person is vaccinated with snopes after exposure.

Also, if you consider gossip as an unavoidable negative trait (i.e., society will never eliminate it, but we all kind of wish we could), then there are direct analogues in biology. Diarrhea, for example, is analogous to gossip in that sense. And it is a major vector for biological infection.

I suspect you could stretch the analogy even further, but my point is that biological systems have some pretty complex interactions as well.

Ouch. That one hit me hard. What I would give to switch that around in myself.

"Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true."

Although the wording from the book is quite strong, essentially 'people are more likely to believe things if they want them to be true, or if they are afraid of them being true'.

So far I have found it an important and practical lesson for many situations.

Based on what? Education doesn't seem to have reduced the incidence of war.

Since education made large scale war possible....

It started two World Wars.

I guess education and war go hand in hand. Perhaps what Adams should have said is, economic integration is the antidote to war. Not as catchy, though.

Japan was easily the most educated country in Asia before WWII.

I don't know how Italy stacks up to the rest of Europe, but Italy was far more educated than Ethiopia before invading it before WWII.

What? You're misinformed. Adams didn't believe that for one. A quote from the Treaty of Tripoli, ratified by the Senate in 1797 and signed by John Adams: "The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion." The vote was unanimous, there was no public dissent, and Adams had the following to say about the treaty (emphasis mine): "I John Adams, President of the United States of America, having seen and considered the said Treaty do, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, accept, ratify, and confirm the same, and every clause and article thereof."

I'm not trying to argue that Christian principles aren't present in our history (they are). But you're regurgitating a common talking point in an attempt to rewrite history.

OK. Civil rights.

Have two countries that grant full legal equality to both men and women ever gone to war?

But the argument in the grandparent post is not supported by history either. The military monk orders of the Crusades are just one example.

Not only does Chritianity as a whole create yet another tribe for people to get divided by and fight over, it doesn't even enforce it's tribal rules (failing not killing, at least try to kill only the infidels) that well. Spanish history will attest to that. And even then it can manage to fracture itself and attempt to rip each other part into pieces.

I don't think the idea of 'but they're my brother in faith' ever really stopped someone from going to war when they realize 'hey, they just took my land'.

Everyone got so caught up on his meme that they didn't see the power in memes. Evidenced by everyone discussing the meme and forgetting the point.

I'll leave the revision to Scott himself, but I will offer an example.

For instance, if my goal is to ultimately solve cancer: A simple catchy saying "Donate $1 today, Write it off Tomorrow -IRS.".

The idea is catchy because it implies personal benefit as a direct compensation. "Writing it off", hell every one wants a way to reduce how much money gets sucked up by taxes every year. To imply that being generous, we can alleviate some of our tax woes, the idea gains traction with people. Of course, the truth is you need a certain net amount of donations to really write it off, and even if you do, you don't gain any money you simply choose where it is spent--the over all net result is still a loss. But that simple matter isn't caught by those rational filters.

Obviously, the idea doesn't constrain what is donated to and as such could be donated to some opensource project not even related to cancer research. Nor would a single dollar donation likely benefit any cause, much less cancer research. However the net effect of the idea, is an overall increase in charitable giving. More money is given, by more people, as the idea spread. The best part about the idea is the immediate positive feedback. Unlike Scott's initial "Education is the antidote of war", an idea like "Donate $1 today, write it off tomorrow" is more likely to spread and achieve it's ultimate goal.

I think Scott should revise his approach by simply adding a fourth trait: An idea virus must be actionable on the individual level.

Also, Yugoslavia had McDonald's franchises since 1988 and was subsequently attacked by the United States and several other countries, acting under UN pretenses.

A more interesting point on war and business would be that no country which has decided not to sell oil it controls to the US in US dollars has NOT been subjected to war.

Education is way to vague and seems to me to imply wisdom imparted from a position of authority to those who internalize it, which is not something that necessarily promotes reason or logic.

  Cobb: What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? 
  An idea. Resilient... highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain 
  it's almost impossible to eradicate.  An idea that is fully formed - 
  fully understood - that sticks; right in there somewhere.

As long as people want stuff and stuff is finite there will always be war.