Skip to content
HomeVideosBooks
AllTopicsTrends
BlogsPodcasts
HistoryListsWatch laterLiked videosFollowing

The videos, books, blogs and podcasts Hacker News keeps recommending, all in one place.

VideosBooksBlogsPodcastsAboutPrivacySettings

Data from Hacker News, HackerTube, HackerBooks, HackerBlogs and Open Library. Credits · Not affiliated with Y Combinator.

HomeVideosBooksBlogsPodcasts
Ctrl K
    The weapons of chaosRobert E. Vardeman

    The weapons of chaos

    Robert E. Vardeman · 1988

    Other
    Open Library
    Stats for nerds
    0recommend
    2mentions
    2people
    2009–2025years
    100% neutral

    Mentions per year

    200920112013201520172019202120232025

    What Hacker News says

    1. trod1234May 2025
      You seem to be conflating early propaganda, and ideology with memetics.

      While it has some of the same elements and is focused on ideology, memetics is quite different. Its improper to say they are the same, or even that Nazism is an example of it (it wasn't). They also don't properly define the term.

      Memetics is 5GW. There is a whole host of other material not under that name turned towards the same purpose which is Counterinsurgency (COIN).

      Variations on the idea have been used in the private sector, and public sector for decades to control narrative, target activists, and destroy cultural identity.

      Further material can be found on COINTELPRO, and its later derivatives (which were published prior to this), as well as the MKULTRA experiments, Stasi's Zersetzung, etc.

      Some have said the COPS act passed by Clinton in 94 includes a continuation of the former (COINTELPRO), informally, and it was just reauthorized in 2023.

      The TL;DR of memetics is its about gathering experts for the purpose of reducing, eliminating, and manipulating objective reality in people towards subtle brainwashing and thought reform. It leaves nothing off limits, and centralized empires always devolve to abusing and using weapons they build on their own subjects.

      An adaptive system (person), uses feedback to adapt. A creature that cannot adapt, or more accurately is made so they cannot adapt, fails Darwin's fitness when the environment becomes chaotic. In other words, extinction, and memetic's focus is cultural contagion, which jumps from person to person across communications mediums.

      Its entirely possible to break people reducing them to simplistic automatons incapable of rational thought, and inducing disassociation or psychosis. Mao proved this in the 1950s, its only gotten better with time, and this methodology aims to create structures that self-propagate such things.

      Wouldn't it be horrifying if people en-masse just started to go insane. The thought reminds me of a fictional book I read, a series called Weapons of Chaos by Robert Vardeman, where an extinct race created a similar weapon, and its why they went extinct.

      Evil people are quite often blind people that are more focused on whether they 'can' do something rather than whether they 'should or ought' to do something.

      thread
    2. giardiniDec 2009
      "Alien Message" reminds me of Robert E. Vardeman's "Weapons of Chaos" trilogy: http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/v/robert-e-vardeman/

      Just as Yudkowsky's short story, those Vardeman novels include advanced aliens living on a much slower time-scale (and much larger space-scale) than we. Man's accidental incursion into their domain triggers a slow-scale attack response that Mankind doesn't at first recognize as intelligent.

      thread

    Related

    Cover of Chaos
    2008–2026

    Chaos

    James Gleick
    45 recommend · 71
    Cover of Chaos Machine
    2023–2026

    Chaos Machine

    Max Fisher
    4 recommend · 4
    Cover of Way of the peaceful warrior
    2008–2023

    Way of the peaceful warrior

    Dan Millman
    17 recommend · 24
    Chaos making a new sciencejames gleick
    2010–2025

    Chaos making a new science

    james gleick
    22 recommend · 39
    Cover of Use of Weapons
    2007–2026

    Use of Weapons

    Iain Banks
    78 recommend · 153
    Cover of The essence of chaos
    2011–2023

    The essence of chaos

    Edward N. Lorenz
    1 recommend · 4
    Cover of The Forever War
    2008–2026

    The Forever War

    Joe Haldeman
    67 recommend · 144
    Making Sense of ChaosJ. Doyne Farmer
    2013–2025

    Making Sense of Chaos

    J. Doyne Farmer
    1 recommend · 4