000			03756cam a2200385 a 4500
999			_c48757 _d48757
003			BJBSDDR
005			20230410115828.0
007			ta
008			960815s1996 nyua b 001 0 eng
020			_a0465084664
020			_a9780465084661
020			_a0465084672
020			_a9780465084678
035			_a(OCoLC)ocm35317516
040			_aDLC _cDLC _bspa
041			_aspa
050	1	4	_aHM 251 _bL987t 1996
082	0	0	_a302 _220
100	1		_aLynch, Aaron.
245	1	0	_aThought contagion : _bhow belief spreads through society / _cAaron Lynch.
250			_a1st ed.
260			_aNew York, NY : _bBasicBooks, _cc1996.
300			_axi, 192 p. : _bill. ; _c25 cm.
504			_aIncludes bibliographical references (p. 179-182) and index.
505	0		_a1. Self-Sent Messages and Mass Belief -- 2. A Missing Link: Memetics and the Social Sciences -- 3. Family Plans: Ideas That Win with Children -- 4. Sexually Transmitted Belief: The Clash of Freedom and Restriction -- 5. Successful Cults: Western Religion by Natural Selection -- 6. Prescription Beliefs: Thought Contagions and Health -- 7. Controversy: Thought Contagions in Conflict -- Epilogue: Thought Contagions of Thought Contagion.
520			_aFans 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.
650		0	_aSocial psychology.
650		0	_aContagion (Social psychology)
650		0	_aMemetics.
650		4	_aPsicología social _91132
650		4	_aContagio (Psicología social) _91133
653			_aMemetics
856	4	2	_3Publisher description _uhttp://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0833/96041489-d.html
942			_2lcc _cBK