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Book review: There Is No Antimemetics Division

stephendiehl.com

121–130 of 243 posts

Re: Book review: There Is No Antimemetics Division

#121
post #87

I just finished this book and complained about it the whole time. The prose is amateur and peppered with cliches (e.g. you should be fined for publishing the phrase "their suit was so sharp it could cut"). His attempt to write about the inner thoughts of the characters was pretty simple. The descriptions of violence and horror also felt child-like, especially the dialogue during those moments (e.g. Redd's introductio…

Have you read free online version or 2025 edited/paid one from penguin books or what have you?

Re: Book review: There Is No Antimemetics Division

#122

I dislike the ending, at least of v2. In it, the author basically gives a fleshed out (christian, neoplatonist) metaphysics to the world he's created which basically amounts to: heaven exists, humans win against the devil, etc. And the ending itself is a self-conscious version of an ascension narrative. It's a very 90deg turn ending to a book otherwise more interested in a world in which heaven is never accessible.

Did I lose chapters or is v1 horribly different? It was so psychologically defeating I was in a very weird malaise for a week.

Re: Book review: There Is No Antimemetics Division

#123

I dislike the ending, at least of v2. In it, the author basically gives a fleshed out (christian, neoplatonist) metaphysics to the world he's created which basically amounts to: heaven exists, humans win against the devil, etc. And the ending itself is a self-conscious version of an ascension narrative. It's a very 90deg turn ending to a book otherwise more interested in a world in which heaven is never accessible.

Did I lose chapters or is v1 horribly different? It was so psychologically defeating I was in a very weird malaise for a week.

Some were edited out for more linear structure, some were dropped due to copyright.

I enjoyed both versions, though the ending in v1 is somewhat crumpled

Re: Book review: There Is No Antimemetics Division

#124

Are there any real-life examples of antimemes? How would antimemes even propagate given that they'd "die out" immediately?

Maybe not exactly an antimeme, but my mind went to biology. Measles can destroy memory B-cells and T-cells, causing immunological amnesia. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1002885

Oh nice example! I guess more generally it's possible for an antimeme to spread if the mechanism of transmission doesn't involve conscious transmission.

Re: Book review: There Is No Antimemetics Division

#125

Are there any real-life examples of antimemes? How would antimemes even propagate given that they'd "die out" immediately?

There is a genre of music that my old roommate was into which titled all of their songs and albums in obscure Unicode characters with no known pronunciation. Songs in this genre may not be perfect antimemes, but I think their resistance to reference is an antimemetic property.

Also, chromosomes are nucleotide-encoded memes, and linear ones use teleomeres to impose limits on the number of replications they support, so that's another imperfect antimeme.

I know of no antimemes whose antiemetic nature comes from their ability to interfere with the human mind, but then again, I wouldn't know about them if they existed, which is more or less the book's point.

Re: Book review: There Is No Antimemetics Division

#126
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last 2 chapters made me not want to recommend the book. I’m so divided about it because the book started of incredibly strong.

This has been my feeling on Dune book 4 - God Emperor of Dune. While it contains several great banger quotes, it leans way more conservative than the previous books to the point that it was difficult to finish. "Oh no, female warriors kissing! ICK!!" and Leto's whole "Humanity _NEEDS_ me as GOD EMPEROR because this IS JUST THE ONLY WAYYY!" are just some examples.

I think you may have missed the point of GEoD

Re: Book review: There Is No Antimemetics Division

#127

Are there any real-life examples of antimemes? How would antimemes even propagate given that they'd "die out" immediately?

I spent a fair amount of time thinking about this and the character of antimemes. Even ended up writing a whole taxonomy and mathematical framework for it.

In general a meme is specific to an entity-pair, with self-censoring information as a subset of antimeme that makes the information itself remove itself from the mind that learns it. In general though, information that is an antimeme is not the same thing as a category of information that describes an antimeme.

So, "your parents weird sextape" is generally antimemetic, you are unlikely to share that information yourself and I would not expect to see many examples where someone posted this. Your password is also antimemetic in most cases.

That said, information may contain both antimemetic and memetic components, such as "the game" (I just lost). The rules inherently are antimemetic and self-censoring, however the memetic component ensures this is still transmitted effectively to as many people as possible. A more entity-pair specific meme-antimeme relation is "where the good drug dealers hang out", which is information that is highly memetic or antimemetic under different conditions.

I think the key isn't to think of these things as strict categories, but labels we ascribe to a more continuous measure of memeablity.

Re: Book review: There Is No Antimemetics Division

#128
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last 2 chapters made me not want to recommend the book. I’m so divided about it because the book started of incredibly strong.

This has been my feeling on Dune book 4 - God Emperor of Dune. While it contains several great banger quotes, it leans way more conservative than the previous books to the point that it was difficult to finish. "Oh no, female warriors kissing! ICK!!" and Leto's whole "Humanity _NEEDS_ me as GOD EMPEROR because this IS JUST THE ONLY WAYYY!" are just some examples.

Book 1-3 of Dune are masterpieces IMO. Book 4 was still good although I didn’t enjoy it as much as the trilogy. But I still consider it part of the same overall “Leto/Paul arc”.

Book 5-6 were okay, but didn’t live up to expectations.

To go on more of a tangent, I really thought these books would be impossible to turn into films, but the Villeneuve films are good so far!

Re: Book review: There Is No Antimemetics Division

#129
post #87

I just finished this book and complained about it the whole time. The prose is amateur and peppered with cliches (e.g. you should be fined for publishing the phrase "their suit was so sharp it could cut"). His attempt to write about the inner thoughts of the characters was pretty simple. The descriptions of violence and horror also felt child-like, especially the dialogue during those moments (e.g. Redd's introductio…

Do you have any recommendations for science fiction books that explore interesting ideas?

There is no Antimemetics Division was really interesting in how some of the scenarios play out. I don't read much but I've been trying to do that more. I really liked the book.

Things like the memory consuming entity, async research, etc I enjoyed.

Re: Book review: There Is No Antimemetics Division

#130

Are there any real-life examples of antimemes? How would antimemes even propagate given that they'd "die out" immediately?

There is a genre of music that my old roommate was into which titled all of their songs and albums in obscure Unicode characters with no known pronunciation. Songs in this genre may not be perfect antimemes, but I think their resistance to reference is an antimemetic property. Also, chromosomes are nucleotide-encoded memes, and linear ones use teleomeres to impose limits on the number of replications they support, so…

A malicious antimeme would be a dark pattern in web design for handling privacy/data/etc. Something designed to satisfy whatever law/regulation requires them to have the option while making the ability to find/remember/interact with it as hard as possible.

Another candidate is the common usage of memory-holing, where important information is removed from public perception maliciously. The Dubai Chocolate thing technically falls into here, as does the whole "war in Iran to distract from the Epstein files" thing. Frankly the whole Epstein stuff is riddled with malicious memes and antimemes to deliberately muddy the waters. Similar to deliberate attempts to inject insane conspiracy beliefs "the moon controls our brains" into conspiracy theories that are too close to something real "mk-ultra".

Consciousness for an antimeme is more of a classification error in my mind, as consciousness as a concept is permanently warped. But you could describe a secret society/dark family secret as a form of living antimeme, hiding some information and preventing it from being shared using a variety of means.

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