Review:The Meme Machine 161
| The Selfish Meme | |
| author | Susan Blackmore |
| pages | 264 |
| publisher | Oxford University Press |
| rating | 6/10 |
| reviewer | Jon Kaz |
| ISBN | |
| summary | Minds Are Memes |
Oxford Professor and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins launched the idea of the meme in 1976 his now famous book "The Selfish Meme" with these words: "when you plant a fertile meme in my mind, you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme's propogation in just the same way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell."
The meme was born, one of the most interesting and timely ideas in media and/or culture.
The idea that ideas are infectious is radical and controversial. To this day, prominent scientists like Harvard's Stephen Jay Gould argue that the meme is a "meaningless metaphor." Other academics (H.Allen Orr, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Rochester) complain that memetics is nothing more than "cocktail-party science."
But the idea has taken hold, especially on the Net, where memes are launched every second and spread just like microbes. (If you want to see how memes work, study the recent writings about Weblogs, on Slashdot and elsewhere, and how the notion has spread electronically into the culture). Information viruses such as memes, wrote Dawkins, follow natural laws much like those governing the change and transmission of biological viruses.
Dawkins saw memes as a unit of cultural evolution. He considered ideas as replicators, working in the exact same way as microbiological organisms like viruses to do spread through the culture. Memes are transmittable, infectious.
Dawkins didn't have the Internet in mind when he coined the term, but new technologies like the Net and TV spread memes faster than was ever possible, elevating his theory.
Big techno-driven media are fusion meme machines: God is Dead, OJ was Framed, Video Games Turn Your Kids Into Killers, Kids Don't Need Parents, the Paparazzi killed Diana, Boris Yeltsin is crazy, a missile shot down TWA Flight 800. Monica and the dress was a nuclear meme.
But according to Dawkins and other memeticists, memes come in all shapes and sizes. They shape culture and politics, through movies, music, books, lectures and word-of-mouth.
In "Wired Style," author Constance Hale defines a meme as a "contagious idea," also as a "virus of the mind," or "unit of cultural inheritance." An especially infectious idea, she says, is a "viral meme." These replicating thoughts are to cultural inheritance what genes are to biological heredity.
When most people talk about memes, they are describing discrete units of knowledge, information, gossip, jokes, faiths. Memetics is the belief that just as biological evolution is driven by the survival of the fittest genes in the gene pool, cultural evolution may be driven by the most successful memes.
In his smart, useful and very clear-headed book about memes - "Thought Contagion, How Belief Spreads Through Society" - Aaron Lynch took Dawkins' idea a step farther. In memetic evolution, he wrote, the hardiest ideas aren't always the most helpful but the ones that are simply the best at replicating.
Despite their growing popularity, memes remain controversial, and they just got more so. Susan Blackmore, a professor at the University of the West of England has elevated the meme to whole other plane - with the blessing of Dawkins, who has written a foreword for her new book.
In "The Meme Machine," (Oxford University Press, US $25), Blackmore argues that memes account not only for the evolution of culture but also for consciousness itself. The mind, she believes, is essentially a nest of memes. The mind is essentially -- and almost entirely -- a vehicle for virulent notions.
"Everything that is passed from person to person is a meme," writes Blackmore. "This includes all the words in your vocabulary, the stories you know, the skills and habits you have picked up from others and the games you like to play. It includes the songs you sing and the rules you obey. So, for example, whenever you drive on the left (or the right!), eat curry with lager or pizza or coke, whistle the them tune from "Neighbors" or even shake hands, you are dealing in memes. Each of these memes has evolved in its own unique way with its own history, but each of them is using your behavior to get itself copied.
Blackmore brings us laboriously to a final point of reference and conclusion, to the nature of the inner self, the part of us that is the center of our consciousness, that feels emotions and has memories, holds beliefs and makes decisions.
Some people call this the soul, or the spirit. Blackmore calls it the "inner self." Her argument is that this inner self is an illusion, a creation of relentless memes for the sake of their own replication.
It's nearly impossible to understand this theory, or how it squares with biology or genetics, let alone buy it. We don't just transmit memes, says Blackmore. Memes 'R Us.
This book is a sorry illustration of how to take a great idea and bury it under much more weight than it can possibly bear. Blackmore's writing is academic, dry and loaded with incomprehensible notions like the "memeplex," her memetic inner self. The book reads almost as if some 12-step therapist co-opted memes for her next group therapy session.
If Dawkin's original thesis was brilliant and simple, Blackmore's is impenetrable. In his foreword, Dawkins says he is "delighted" to recommend Blackmore's book, triggering a personal meme. He's a generous man.
Humans are two kinds of thing, Blackmore has concluded: meme machines and selves. Having read this several times, I have no idea what it means. Or why anybody would care.
It's almost impossible to pay attention either to media or the Web and not believe in memes and memetics, whatever the academics say. Ideas are infectious, and they do move through the culture like viruses. In a way, columns, posts, software programs, even flames are memes - they spread precisely like viruses, and they do replicate as units of cultural evolution.
Anybody on the Net sees this almost everytime they get online.
Technologies like TV and the Net have given memes powerful new ways in which to travel and replicate. That makes them significant, a social, business and political tool as well as a cultural idea. Memetics do affect all of us, and ought to be taken more, not less, seriously.
But books like "The Meme Machine" will have the opposite effect. Memeplex theory in this form is loopy, not revealing or penetrating.
Blackmore has taken an important idea and made it obtuse, almost ridiculous. Anybody interested in the idea would do a lot better to get Dawkin's landmark The Selfish Gene or Lynch's blessedly excellent, clear and direct study (published last year by Basic Books, $US 26) of contemporary memes, and how they affect politics, media, culture and thought.
If you still want the Blackmore book, pick it up at Amazon.
Memes (Score:1)
Nobody should be shocked to learn that compelling ideas, valid or not, are commonly shared among many people. Nor should one be shaken to the core to discover that "customs" are events that recur not because they're the logical reaction to the immediate environment but precisely because they've occured in the past.
This has been going on for years. (Score:1)
Try reading "Intellectual Imposteurs" by Alan Sokal. For a full acount of this fenomenon.
Say what? (Score:1)
It seems like the majority of the comments here are from people who have been able to grok it though. Maybe I just need to read more, as my knowledge on this subject is almost nil.
Memes and Microsoft? (Score:1)
I'm hallucinating that I read somewhere that Gates/Microsoft had great interest in the meme theory, and used it as input to their PR/ad campaigns, etc. Anyone else heard this?
Prof. Blackmore's book (Score:2)
I wish this was easier to understand. Several years ago, when I was working for local radio in the English Midlands, the author gave me an interview for one of my programmes, in which she discussed the similar ideas in her book "Dying to Live" (all about Near-Death-Experiences). The final point she made, about the meme-based model of the world around us being that which we call "consciousness", hasn't hit home yet (maybe because I'm a practicing Christian), but it would be really useful to have a door into her understanding here. She's jolly well researched, too. I hesitate to condone the word "psycho-babble" because discussion of such subjects is rather like trying to tell a being in a two-dimensional world that there is an "up". Actually, just thinking about all this makes my head hurt again. Sorry. JHW
I'm loving this book (Score:3)
But then I've not finished the book so maybe I'm destined to be disappointed. Even if that's the case, though, you've not managed to mention any weakness in the book that isn't really a weakness in the reader.
Reviews of Academic Books From Outside Academe (Score:1)
It should give us pause because of the underlying criteria Jon Katz is using. He doesn't dislike the book because the thesis is poorly supported, or the thesis is wrong; he doesn't even offer distaste for the subject matter (no, he revels in memes, as I think anyone observing current Internet culture should), and only seems to note distastefully that the writing is ``dry.''
No, it looks like Mr. Katz pans the book because he doesn't understand it. The writing isn't simple and clear, but (from inference) typical academic, and the subject matter is dealt with in a precise and laborious way. Apparently there's no jumping to conclusions, just slow presentation of information and inference, until we get to the end, and find the thesis (People are comprised of memes and some more basic hardware used to pass memes, and the memes are what make us sentient?) -- a thesis that, because of the care taken in presenting it with a full show of support, bores and confuses Mr. Katz.
Certainly, some of the above is inference and hyperbole. I hope that Mr. Katz will forgive me pressing a point at his expense. But his analysis of this book opened him to it (not the verdict, but his display of the thought process he went through to decide his verdict).
Perhaps this book is too heavy for someone who is too busy to give it his full attention, or for people that are used to executive summaries. I hardly think, though, that such ``heaviness'' makes it unsuitable reading material for the Slashdot audience, as I (as a single member with admittedly foggy understanding) see said audience.
Your understanding of people, Mr. Katz, keeps me reading your articles long after your writing style would normally drive me away. Your assumption, however, that at least I as a Slashdot reader appreciate your review that pushes away ``too difficult'' material is wrong.
Everyone encounters material -- both reading material and tasks -- too difficult to understand easily, or even with more than cursory examination. Not everyone shies away from such material, and not everyone encourages others to shy away from material that they found too difficult.
Re:intangibles and junk science (Score:1)
You blast psychology and other social sciences over and over again for lack of accountability and evidence -- "What evidence brings her to say that?" -- and yet it doesn't look like you're sufficiently familiar with the topic.
Specifically, you attack everything about the book without actually knowing (beyond cursory examination) the subject matter, and without a single clue as to what research was put into it.
Your attitude seems only reasonable if one starts with the assumption that no proof can be garnered about the subject. Therefore, anyone spouting theories is spouting hot air, because there's nothing to back it up. You seem to assume that this book can't possibly have any basis in fact, because it's a book on "social sciences."
I think your basic assumption is severely flawed, to say the least. Working with psychologists right now (I'm a programmer), I can say there's a great deal of work put into being sure that the measuring methods mean something, the experiments are relevant to the question being asked, and the data is collected in a statistically relevant way.
I can speak nothing towards the book, having not read it -- but I find your attitude of "What will we gain from this analysis? Insight? Inner peace? Enlightenment?" completely unscientific. Are questions of our intellectual origin, or mental processes, out of reach of science? Or are they as fair game as questions of our physical origin?
Something that neuropsychologists are able to show is that thoughts really do correspond to physical processes: questions of intellectual origin are simply extremely complex questions of physical origin.
Re:intangibles and junk science (Score:1)
As for your ``example'' of how ``flawed'' psychology journals are. First, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised that editors were simply amazed that a physicist would publish an article in their journal, due to the bias you very adequately demonstrate. They certainly should have investigated the article, but I would be surprised to find that every article written by, say microbiologists for physics journals are better handled by the reviewing boards.
As for the psychologist I'm working for: I haven't been around long enough to learn much of the experiments, rather than my end -- statistical analysis and software generation.
The most I can say is that your low opinion of anything outside of physics and chemistry contrary to my own experience of research psychology, and other soft science. If I am simply undisciplined and easily fooled, so be it -- but I doubt it; I'm not exactly a soft science person myself.
Re:Say what? (Score:1)
You might prefer thinking of it not as a theory, but as a model. That is, as a way of modeling how ideas spread, predicting when they will stop spreading, and so on. Sometimes that can give us insights we might not otherwise see.
Cocktail Party Piffle (Score:1)
We talk to one another not just to selflessly impart information, but to receive the gratification of an elicited response. You tell someone about something because, when that person finds the idea interesting, they find *you* interesting. Likewise, the news media wants to tell you about things you'll find interesting -- then you'll find *them* interesting, and you'll watch, and they'll make money from commercials.
Conversely, of course, you won't bother repeating information to someone if you don't think it's going to interest them.
And this is how ideas live and die. The idea of "memes" takes the process out of context and really fails to get at the real issues behind why ideas spread -- it conveniently factors out human nature. Nebulous concepts like ideas surviving on their own and propagating due to their value to a culture are interesting fodder for late-night freshman year dormitory discussions but fail to take important things like human nature into account. And therefore they're not very interesting.
Re:Cocktail Party Piffle (Score:1)
It's amazing that someone would actually advance this hypothesis. We're all driven to reproduce, and some of our (um, I mean mainstream modern Western cultural) social conventions, such as monogamy, don't necessarily maximize our ability to spread our genes. If you do the math, and want to maximize your chances of propagating your genes, then men should mate with as many partners as they can. This isn't because of some silly idea virus garbage, this is simple biology.
Apes, cats, bats, rats, and rabbits all do the same thing. They don't communicate ideas, and yet they managed to figure it out.
Other cultural taboos also originate from the drive to increase the survival rate of the species. Take pork, for example. The prohibition on eating pork in certain religions no doubt comes from the fact that eating undercooked pork can lead to trichinosis, which is a fatal disease. (Pigs carry Trichinella Spiralis, which causes trichinosis). Someone probably observed that lots of people who ate pork caught this and died, while those who didn't, didn't. So, unaware of the parasite living in their swine, they decided that it must be God punishing them for eating the "filthy animal" and issued an appropriate edict.
That's it. Cause and effect coupled with instinct and the ability to communicate. Not some crapola mental virus.
I don't trust your analysis (Score:1)
When Hawking's "A brief history of time" came out most critics dismissed it as incomprehensible. What they meant was incomprehensible to their arty minds. Another Blackmoore book I read "education of a parapsychologist" was delightfully devoid of bullshit, so I find it hard to believe that she has changed so much. Are you sure it was empty psychobabble ? Maybe you just didn't understand it.
Nice that someone understands (Score:1)
Just a couple of points - the term subconsious is misleading. Consciousness is a small sub-set of what our brains are doing. That we think of the rest of what happens in our minds as the subconsious betrays how inaccurate our representation of ourselves can be. It's like the 'ps' command thinking of the processes it monitors as being subroutines. This theory of consiousness is not philosphy, it's falsifiable.
Actually I don't believe a turing machine can be sentient, a quantum computer could be, but that's another story.
Burroughs and Memes (Score:1)
Philip K. Dick also had similar ideas, expressed in his exegis and novels such as VALIS and Radio Free Albemuth.
Re:Memetics R Us (Score:1)
I'm not sure about this author, but I did not get that out of Dawkins. Remember, in oversimplified form, for Dawkins, the purpose of life is to replicate genes. If memes can be another tool of genes to replicate themselves, so be it.
Re:Good summary in Skeptic Magazine (Score:1)
I wonder if this is another case where the PoMos are postliterate as well.
Re:Memes and Microsoft? (Score:1)
I disagree with Jon Katz (Score:1)
Re:intangibles and junk science (Score:1)
Psychologists make an interesting career out of studying intangibles. Many great things have come out of psychology. In the end, however, one is studying intangibles. As such, the field and the results derived from it can only be taken so seriously.
I always think that psychology is heading for obsolecenes - after all, many problems caused by an ego and id conflict can be neatly solved by Prozac (or plain old ethanol). The more progress we make in neurobiology, the less we need to rely on a tradition rooted in the last century.
The paranoid in me think of the whole "human consciousness is merely an illusion of memes" as a new attempt to attack the whole framework of science - "See, even the scientists now admit that all thoughts are nothing more than the products of illusions". We really should legalise recreational drug use so the "tree hugging hippies" in the social science department have something more entertaining to do than spawning new crackpot theories.
Excuse my grumpiness, studying for an signal process paper exam with those fun fourier transforms and integrating fun fun random distributions make me want to charge up a 600V 500uF electrolyte and zap some moron claiming his/her LSD-induced crazy talk is as valid as the theory of evolution.
Re:intangibles and junk science (Score:1)
Further, your insinuation that people who are criticing this matter are "uncomfortable" or "unable to think [about]" these matters is more than just a poor grasp of the issues at hand, it is insulting. Part of the scientific process is the meticulous analysis of a theory and the evidence supporting it by people other than those who presented it. This is the cornerstone of science. If you take exception to people who try to do this and insult them to boot, you had best keep out of all things scientific, for you clearly then are completely lacking in the understanding necessary to participate in such discussions.
Finally, as to your remark Certainly dismissing it as "psychobabble" reveals a hostility towards the entire notion of philosophizing about the self. I would re-emphasize that this meme material is being presented as psychologial (thus a scientific) theory. Remember, she is a psychologist at a university, and books published by her of this nature is clearly going to be recieved as psychological in nature. Indeed, from all indications, she promotes her theories as such. If it is philosophy, then the author should make that disclaimer that her book is not a book of or about psychology, but philosophy. To do otherwise is disingenuous at best, pernicious at worst. One cannot have it both ways.
I would also point out to you that ad hominem attacks are always the resort of the desperate, those who have no legitimate facts or points to argue about, with respect to the matter at hand. Insulting is a poor way of proving the validity of your (or others') thoughts.
Re:intangibles and junk science (Score:1)
Go read Dr. Richard Feynman's commencement speach "Cargo Cult Science" [pd.infn.it] and you will see why such an attitude is not unreasonable.
There has been a conflict between the hard and soft sciences for decades. Just two or three years ago, a physicist submitted an "article" to a psychological journal which expounded upon the effects of quantum gravity on behavior. It was total nonesense, a hoax from the start, but it was manufactured for a specific reason. The journal accepted it without ever investigating its validity. A hard-science journal always has a board of reviewers who frequently reject papers, explaining to the author where their work is lacking. Most of the time, those authors then fill in the gaps, and often get accepted later when they've done a better job of it.
To continue with the story, this article was published in the journal, lauded by psychiatrists. Then the hoax was revealed by the author, much to the delight of chemists, physicists, and other hard-science people. The psychologists howled in complaint, much to our amusement.
In the end, it was their own fault for not investigating the validity of that paper. That's what make science work, peer review. In the hard sciences, we try to validate or prove wrong other's work. Experiments are repeated to ensure the validity of the result. Reproducibility is where it's at.
I can say there's a great deal of work put into being sure that the measuring methods
mean something, the experiments are relevant to the question being asked, and the data is collected in a
statistically relevant way.
All of these things he's doing are important, certainly, but they are only the begining. I'm sure your psychologist is working hard, but is he reproducing favorable experiements, or does he feel that's a waste of effort? Does he put as much work into disproving his theory as he does into proving it? When he has the data, does he look for uncontrolled variables? Does he look for side-affect reasons that produced his favorable results which would undermine their support of his theory? Is he constantly refining his theory to match the experimental data, or refining his data to match his theory?
It's much like open-source software. In this case, however, we're studying nature. We're either right, or we're not, and if we're not, nature will put us right when experiments prove a bad theory is wrong. We must be carefull not to fool ourselves, though.
Re:intangibles and junk science (Score:1)
I've read Feynman's article before, and once again I am not very impressed with it. It's a commencement
speech written by an incredible man, but it's still a commencement speech.
"still a commencement speech"? Goodness, that says a lot about a lot of things. If you're not very impressed with it, it just shows how little you understand science. Every scientist I know holds Feynman in extremely high regard, not because of what he's achieved, but because of his high scientific standards. You are in no position to disgregard what he says on what science is. I am quite disappointed by your reaction.
Working with psychologists right now (I'm a programmer)
If your training is in programming, you are certainly in no position to either assest the scientific valdidity of psychology, nor to judge Dr. Feynman. He is a man out of both of our classes, and a scientist with few peers. Ignore his words at your own risk, even if it is "still a commencment speech" as you so cavalierly put it.
intangibles and junk science (Score:3)
I hardly think it fair to call Mr. Katz's characterization of the material to be a reflection of himself rather than the book. Psychologists make an interesting career out of studying intangibles. Many great things have come out of psychology. In the end, however, one is studying intangibles. As such, the field and the results derived from it can only be taken so seriously.
Like all of the soft sciences (aka social sciences, humanities) it is very difficult to support theories with hard experimental data. In physics and chemistry, theories are (relatively) easily proven over and over with independent scientists verifying others' work. In psychology, however, one may construct theoretical models to characterize concepts and states of reality as we know them without much accountability.
When a chemist finds a new method of synthesis, the results are tangible, you can hold the them in a bottle. Likewise when a physicist tinkers with the forces of nature (ie, superconductors lifting massive weights off the ground, etc). Even the most abstract theories such as Quantum Mechanics (my specialization) can be proven through rigorous (though arcane) experimentation. We have even reached the point in theoretical chemistry that we can predict the results of a chemical reaction (no small accomplishment, let me assure you).
Phsychologists, however, are doomed to study a system in which they are handicapped by the ultimate bias: they are the systems they study. Therefore, while they may be learned and know important things about the human mind and consciousness, going past a certain depth or level passes the point of usefulness or meaningfulness.
The initial descriptions of what a meme is, as quoted from Dawkins' book, seem simple and useful enough. (Take the most serious note of that, for most important truths are simple.) Memes seem to me, from what I'm reading here, to be soundbytes. Short, catch-phrases without meaning or depth-of-thought. Then, however, Blackmore declares, "Everything that is passed from person to person is a meme,". Oh? What evidence brings her to say that? Are we now saying that memes are the packets in the human internet we call civilization? If so, do they vary in size or are they standardized? If they're standard how many memes make up the complex concepts expressed in mathematics, physics, and chemistry? How do memes (if they are building blocks) fit into interpersonal relationships? According to Blackmore, it's all memes. Based on what evidence? Based on what observations? Who decides? If we're spending all this energy to just *define* what a meme is, is it really so important? What will we gain from this analysis? Insight? Inner peace? Enlightenment? Thank you, but people have been getting all that from religion and philosophy for centuries now. So is psychology now the religion of the "post-modern" era? (another term I find meaningless). Bottom line, where's the science? Isn't that what psyhcology is supposed to be, a science?
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for religion, inner peace, greater self-introspection. I'm very devout in my faith, but let's not mix our disciplines here.
In the end, I can guess at Blackmore's motivations. It is, of course, these motivations that dictate the quality of her work. I've been a member of Academia long enough too see how it works. The Publish or Perish code in Universities runs deep and runs strong. Professors are denied tenure and or promotion on the basis of what they can churn out. Quantity, not quality. Like everywhere else in our information (not idea) based society, truely meaningful thought and dialog are being drowned out in a sea of news, facts, data, bits, and bytes.
From all I've seen, the concept of the meme peaked in usefulness and meaningfulness with its introduction in Dawkins' book. Let it be a name for the flotsam of the sea of information we're drowning in. I've noticed of late that on Slashdot, if you don't post early after a story goes up, you'll either be the last one on a list of 200+, or no one will read your thoughts because ever more new stories are getting posted and the piece of news at the bottom of the page just isn't as interesting as what's at the top. Given the time differential between the story (and inital comment's) posting and my post, I doubt this essay of mine will even be ready by many more people than the fellow to whom I'm responding (if he even looks at his user page). I'm sure it won't get moderated up any, after all, who's reading this story now anyway? There's more intersting stuff going on right now, who cares about then. There's no time anymore for introspection or analysis.
Too many memes, too little time.
Re:What are memes? (Score:1)
You've got it backwards. Religious beliefs are memes.
Memetic Virus' (Score:1)
When one is in the grip of a 'memetic virus', the idea or concept is all-consuming. If you've ever had a 'crush' on someone you know what I mean.
Personable religious and political leaders exercise tried and true methods to spread their own ideas at the expense of others.
Signs, symbols, slogans and propaganda are all methods of spreading and reinforcing the effects of a particular meme.
What makes some memes more likely to 'catch' than others? The same things, in a sense, that make us more likely to catch a cold; weakness, fatigue, exposure and whatnot.
Armed forces, cults, religions, Alcoholics Anonymous, whatever, all focus initially on getting new recruits to break down emotionally to the point where they are convinced that they lack the ability to direct their own lives. At this point, the memetic virus enters to fill the gap. The host is given new strength in return for utter reliance upon the new virus.
This is perhaps not always a bad thing, but certainly something to watch out for.
Correction 2. Wrong review title (Score:1)
Can't wait for the sequel! (Score:1)
This book will certainly show you a different view of the world, even if you don't agree with it. It is a starting point for a new science of memetics, not the final destination. Much of it's content is speculation, but the arguments are persuasive and thought provoking. The final chapters on the nature of 'self' and 'creativity' deserve a book of their own really. You can't do such world changing theories justice in just a few pages.
I am looking forward to the articles and books written in response to Susan's ideas, as well as her next book on the subject.
Alex
It's a matter of definition (Score:1)
Without having read the book, I can imagine that her theory is similar to Daniel Dennett's "Multiple Drafts" model of consciousness, which he presents in Consciousness Explained as an alternative to what he calls the "Cartesian Theater".
If that's correct, I would say the claim that the mind is entirely composed of memes is a matter of definition -- it sounds like she extends the definition of memes to encompass all those things that make up our "inner lives" (with or without giving a better explanation than anyone else has of exactly what those things are). I guess that makes sense, in that the concepts from "Selfish Genes and Selfish Memes" (IIRC, the relevant chapter from Dawkins' The Selfish Gene) can be applied to these things as well as to the more discrete memes. Dawkins' central idea (or one of them) was the application of the concepts of evolution beyond their traditional domain of genes, right? This is just taking it further.
I think where this would cause trouble is if you fail to keep the extended definition of "meme" in mind: if you still think of it as referring to the relatively large, discrete ideas, then it would certainly sound wrong to say that that is all the mind consists of, but I think you would be misunderstanding the theory.
Though again, I haven't read the book, and maybe this is not what she is saying at all. This is a theory that I could agree with, but if it's not the one she is suggesting, then I may or may not agree with whatever it is that she does mean.
David Gould
Re:What are memes? (Score:1)
What if, rather, memes are a religious belief? The point being: you can model behavior all you like with one theory or another, but you really can not ever definatively answer the question: Why do we behave like we do? (Hrm, perhaps the real question is: Why do we try to understand why we behave like we do? (Ugh, nevermind :-P))
Re:intangibles and junk science (Score:1)
Re:intangibles and junk science (Score:1)
Her motivations, or her meme's?
Language is a virus (Score:1)
I'd try to find the relevant passage, but all my books are in storage
mahlen
What's wrong with dropping out? To me, this is the whole point: one's right
to withdraw from a social environment that offers no spiritual sustenance, and
to mind one's own business.
--William S. Burroughs
Re:Consciousness is not a Memeplex (Score:1)
I'm not sure that makes too much sense, I just woke up
Re:The body is a cellplex (Score:1)
Both of those languages might boil down to a binary fromat.. and memes appear at this level.. the hardware has affinity for certain patterns in the binary format, and this affinity causes the kernel to recieve a "good" event everytime those binaries are run, sometimes its
Yeesh.
Rave Morning.
Hehe Hope you enjoy it..
Re:Correction 3 - Reviewer's Name (Score:1)
Yes, I WoT. (Score:1)
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Meta-meme (Score:1)
The parallel is, just as a certain gene, such as the one for 'blue eyes' controls certain aspects of one's physical build, a meme is an idea that influences one's behavior or decision making, what advertising is pretty much about - so if the boss says to put an SQL server up and you kneejerkingly write a purchase order for a M$ product without any thought, then you have the M$ meme - your mind is no longer in control, just a slave robot to someone else's selfish desires. Of course this process depends on the meme having
Chuck
I can't stand memes! (Score:2)
Oh, wait, maybe those are mimes. Nevermind.
Sounds fairly simple to me. (Score:1)
body is the product of a bunch of selfish genes,
then (simplistically) the mind is the product of
a bunch of selfish memes. Unfortunately this
is a misinterpretation of the analogy, as minds
are considered the foodsource of memes as opposed
to their vehicles (any form of media).
K.
-
How come there's an "open source" entry in the
Good summary in Skeptic Magazine (Score:1)
Re:Prof. Blackmore's book (Score:1)
You actually admitted that you didn't understand it all. Of course you didn't. Even the author doesn't truly understand the meaning in human terms. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to explore that very difficult subject of what we really are.
Others on this list, instead of admitting that they didn't understand, would rather rubbish such ideas and indulge in self-important posturing about their own imagined cleverness, than accept that their own facilities of comprehension might be lacking.
And you still didn't blankly reject Blackmore's concept of selfhood as a memeplex, despite the apparent soullessness of that theory to a practising Christian, who must be at some risk of circumscribed thinking concerning such matters.
But I rather think you possess far more chance of understanding than those poseurs do. If it makes your head hurt than means your brain is doing work. No pain no gain!
If you were to read Daniel Dennett's Consciousness Explained I think you would find some though-provoking ideas there. Then you might read William Calvin's "How Brains Think" and come to the realisation that Dennett, and Dawkins and Blackmore might actually be right.
Of course nothing will provoke thought in the minds of those New Age freaks who roundly denounce anything that just doesn't happen to fit in with the anti-rational zeitgeist of their generation. Too bad, it seems there are an awful lot of them here on Slashdot. Sometimes it feels as if we are about to slide back into the Dark Ages.
If you don't know what I mean, get on the web and look up qmind or quantum mind. There are 'scientists' among them, who know how to do algebra but the formulae don't really mean anything (Note: I am not talking about Penrose, though I don't support his view either). And there are enough kooks saturating those mailing lists that you'll soon get the idea of what qmind is really all about.
Of couse you'll probably be appalled by my
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Don't you folks get it??? (Score:1)
Don't you folks get it? All ideas are memes. Religious beliefs certainly are memes. The whole idea of "memes" is also a meme. Even the scientific method is a meme.
These are all ideas that have survived and flourished in people's minds, and continue to perpetuate themselves in one way or another.
The "Good Times virus" and similar hoaxes are also memes, and are obvious examples of how memes can spread like viruses.
Conciousness (was Re:I don't trust your analysis) (Score:1)
Consiousness is the process of updating your internal representation of yourself, and that's all.
You just blew my mind. Er, wait... Maybe you just updated my internal representation of my internal representation of myself. Or something like that.
Your AI background, email address, and your choice of words suggests to me that you probably have a file named conciousness.c in your home directory. Care to release it under an open-source license? :)
Anyway, to put your statement into less programmer-like words, it sounds like you're saying that conciousness is our awareness of our own awareness. In a recursive-like fashion, we are also aware of our own awareness of our own awareness, etc. Maybe this is an interesting observation, sort of like how a turing machine can implement a turing machine?
That's not to say that we have to be fully aware of our own awareness in order to be concious. Lots of stuff goes on in our own minds that we are totally unaware of: specifically, the subconcious. "Look, Ma! I'm aware of my own lack of awareness!". ;)
All this thinking involving conciousness, AI, recursion, and turing machines has lead me to the question:
How many thoughts do you think a thought thought could think if a thought thought could think thoughts?
This gives me a headache. However, I am aware of the headache, and am also aware of my own awareness of it. As you said, my internal representation of myself has been updated. Or has it? How, exactly, do you even have an internal representation of yourself? And how is it being updated? And how can this internal representation of yourself produce such an idea as the "internal representation of yourself"? If we understand conciousness, do we really understand it, or do we just think we understand it???
is consciousness a meme? (Score:1)
The fearful insistence that consciousness is special is yet another example of the desperate provincialism that insists that the Earth is flat, that the solar system is geocentric, and that humans are the final goal of evolution.
Re:is consciousness a meme? (Score:1)
Actually, from what I know of meme theory, its ability to predict or explain is pretty weak. I read the "Thought Contagion" book and it didn't change this impression. It would be nice to hear that it's turned into something useful.
Katz doesn't understand memes (Score:1)
I haven't read the Blackmore book, and this review doesn't help much in deciding whether or not I should. There's a lot of introductory stuff here; I guess this review wasn't originally intended for the Slashdot audience.
In the small part of the review where he actually talks about the Blackmore book, Katz appears to be offended that Blackmore talks about mundane memes, instead of just the self-replicating ones. Katz seems to have missed the point about what a basic and fundamental building block of thought the meme is. This doesn't ridicule or trivialize Dawkins at all. In fact, it's vitally necessary for understanding.
From Katz's article:
If Katz actually accepts this terribly inaccurate definition of a meme, then it's no wonder that he's missed the point. I think he needs to re-read Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" -- and not just the famous Chapter 11.BTW, what's all this about "fusion meme machines" and "nuclear memes"? Is Katz simply being figurative about highly successful meme complexes, or is this this a reference to some serious theory that I'm not aware of?
memes, shmemes (Score:1)
Can the same be said for memes? Consider all the ways in which religions, legal systems, spoken languages, and computer operating systems have borrowed concepts from one another, and then modified the concepts that they borrowed. Which concepts, or components-of-concepts, are so basic that they can only be borrowed as "digital" units?
Furthermore: there's a branch of psychology called "social psychology", which, as you might expect, studies how social forces people's behavior and thinking. (A classic social-psychology study is the Milgram experiment, where subjects believed they were "teachers" giving fatal electric shocks to "students" in an "educational experiment".) What can "memetics" explain that current theories of social psychology, or our common-sense knowledge of how people act, can't explain? How many fans of "memetics" have even read The Social Animal, the classic (and very readable) basic textbook of social psychology?
Critical thinking is almost impossible? Maybe for some people....Re:some memes, some shmemes (Score:1)
The reading guide that accompanied The Social Animal included one study on rumors (it was done around WW2, when the government had a particular interest in the effect of rumor). Basically, subject A looked at a picture, and then described it to subject B, and so on. Anyway, then the experimenter compared the last person's description with the actual picture, and compared the description with the actual picture.
If my dim memory is correct, one thing they discovered was that emotionally touchy stuff was extremely likely to get mistransmitted to better fit the speaker's prejudices. For example, if the original picture had a white man with a knife and a black man in it, after descriptions of the picture passed throgh a few white subjects, there was a significant chance that someone would say there was a black man with a knife in the picture.
Another thing I remember from my intro-psych class is that over time, people forget the sources of the information that they remember. This is obviously useful for people in the marketing/propaganda biz -- your message will eventually sink in, even though the people who hear it know you're not an entirely trustworthy source.
Re:Isn't there room for a middle ground? (Score:1)
- All of the basic units you mentioned change over time (by comparison, the genetic code that maps nucleotides onto amino acids is nigh-immutable).
- Words change meaning over time, and not just by acquiring idiomatic meanings, either. For example, the word "awful" used to mean "afraid".
- The shapes of letters change over time; any decent dictionary should have charts or pictures that show the relationships between the old Phonecian alphabet, the Greek, and the Roman.
- Phonemes change over time -- that's why different native speakers have regional accents.
- If you treat words, etc., as the building-blocks of memes, what happens when someone rephrases an idea they heard in a different language? All the building-blocks have changed -- therefore, it must be a completely different meme!
- If all "memetics" has to say is that we communicate using words, and learn those words from other people, then it's a trivial and unoriginal theory.
So why do these attempts sometimes fail? Do memes come with hit points? You're doing handwaving, not science. Of course, some ideas spread quickly. People knew this long before the word "meme" was coined. And of course, some ideas don't spread so quickly. I don't see how talking about "memes" gets me any closer to understanding why some ideas spread more quickly than others. A fellow I once knew said there's a difference between keeping an open mind and letting your brains fall out.Virus of the Mind (Score:1)
Language is a Virus? (Score:1)
Correction 3 - Reviewer's Name (Score:2)
There's a moral here, and it's name is the Preview button.
What are memes? (Score:1)
impossible to quantify.
Hey, it looks like I got first comment
Re:Correction.. (Score:1)
Okay genius. Let me guess. You have a degree in Psychology, Computer Science, and Quantum physics? I'd bet those "few lines" of Katz article are the only lines you *did* read, thus making you a hippocrite by not having done your research!
Just by the tone your post it's quite obvious that the only reason you didn't like this article was either because it's not written in C, or because it's evidently written by someone with a little more maturity than you.
I'm getting sick of the "you're responsible for what I read because I don't have the capacity to stop myself" posts. SOMEONE please moderate them out!
Re:Correction.. (Score:1)
That was completely unwarranted. May I suggest the Threshold selector for a less sickening
Meme it up. (Score:1)
Still don't know what a meme is... (Score:1)
I was immediately sucked in by the show, but since I missed the beginning, I probably didn't get her official explanation of memes. What I did hear dissapointed me. It seemed that the definition of meme was constantly shifting and becoming more encompassing as the show went on, until a meme was practically anything we remembered.
Based on the little I know, memes most definitely exist; the very idea of memes is itself a meme: QED. Still, I have trouble with her premise that it's the memes themselves that are the active entities - that the evolution of human brains was influenced by memes so it would perpetuate and proagate memes. You know, like the one that goes "Human beings were created by water to transport it uphill." (Unix fortune)
The hypothesis is certainly a clever one, but it doesn't mean it's correct. I like to believe that atoms are really little solar systems, complete with entire civilizations. Believe me, it explains so many things! ;-)
By the way, was it William S. Burroughs who first came up with the idea that language is a virus (in Nova Express, or The Ticket That Exploded) or was it Laurie Anderson? And where did she get the idea?
Re: PK Dick (Score:1)
Re:Just a few additions (Score:1)
I don't know, maybe it's because Katz consistently demonstrates that he is either unwilling or unable to 1) research his topic, and 2) check over his writing to see if there are any glaring errors
These are reasonable things to expect from a "professional" writer.
Re:Correction.. (Score:1)
Well, Katz is a hell of a lot older than me...
Re:I'm loving this book (Score:1)
On the other hand, the first X chapters make an entertaining and simple introduction to the subject of memes, and gave me a lot of things to think about - The theory is horribly plausible, and the idea of the catholic church as an organism, which uses resources to propragate itself, and has built in defense mechanisms is quite compelling.
Re:memes, shmemes (Score:1)
This is a really inaccurate analogy. You can have 'half of cholera', thanks to how recombination works.
Check out a decent genetics textbook; look at the definations for penetrance and expression.
john.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Snowcrash anyone? (Score:1)
But it still had social implications. Something along the lines of memes are necessary for our social makeup. darkewolf @ CyberPunks.Org [cyberpunks.org]
Correction.. (Score:1)
Thanks. You beat me to it. (Score:1)
It may not be that kind of book at all, of course. For a book review, this was singularly uninforming. I learnt more about it from comments than from Katz's description, which was essentially three or four one-sentence paragraphs at the centre of an extended discussion on which authors on the subject he personally prefers. That should surely have been an opinion piece, not a review. A review is supposed to tell you a little more than (a) it's dry and academic - or study notes for a 12-step program (not two genres which I would have thought had a great deal in common, but still); and (b) it develops an argument which results in a discussion on how we think (goodness! A psychologist looking at that! What a surprise...)
I don't believe it's entirely fair to criticise use of coinages such as "memeplex", either. We can't all generate snap buzzwords for concepts such as the hopeful monster (Gould) or the selfish gene (Dawkins -- and it's _gene_, Katz, not meme). In fact such cool phrases can be truly annoying: therre is a limit to how often the butterfly flapping its wings can be alluded to without people ultimately forgetting all about what it was intended to illuminate. Introducing "memeplex" instead of a three-word (long-winded? Dry? Academic?) alternative might be an entirely reasonable ploy.
I have a number of books on psychology, psychiatry (note -- they are different, a distinction which escapes those who take it upon themselves to complain about the conflation of cracker and hacker. Sorry. Pet peeve), sociology, anthropology and the rest. They're not necessarily easy reading. They look at big subjects and they have their own language. There is a spectrum ranging from the "make a quick buck" variety, with their absent index and lack of references replaced by "Scientists say... Therefore it is obvious that... ", and the PhD thesis which gets turned into a book, complete with all footnotes, references and appendices. And a very wide spectrum it is.
Beyond a complaint about unnecessarily complicated language and a quick reference to 12 step programs, Jon Katz's "review" doesn't even tell me at which end of the market this book is aimed.
Conscioussness is species-independent. Dammit! (Score:1)
Thank you. What's with all the superficial theor- (Score:1)
The meme is the message. (Score:1)
- - -
Memetics R Us (Score:1)
The best site I have found discussing memes is at the Principia Cybernetica [vub.ac.be]. It is well researched and well-linked.
As far as this book is concerned, it sounds like yet another psychologist coming up with a theory to end all theories, at least as far as human psychology is concerned. Freud, Adler, Jung, and Chomsky all have made the same mistake, namely the belief that their particular theory can explain all human behavior. The author of this book apparently does the same thing. While it might be interesting, that does not mean it is a complete theory.
I have not read the book, so someone correct me if I'm wrong.
Re:Just a few additions (Score:1)
#ifndef RANT
#define RANT
Really bugs me that people consider cultures to be static things that need to be 'preserved' The French try to do this, the Quebecoise try to do it. IMHO, they're failing pretty badly.
#endif
Re:Correction.. Internet and memes (Score:1)
Different memes, like viruses, propagate with vastly varying success rates in different populations. We'll have an interesting opportunity to study memes as the networked population becomes more stratified.
Mimes give memes a bad name.
Just a few additions (Score:1)
2) I also started to think that maybe maybe the websites we're making here are at my work [acountingweb.co.uk] are weblogs [slashdot.org] too, after reading the article but it's in the eye of the beholder really. Maybe it's just the words, not the ideas that spread..
3) If it is the idea that spreads infectiously through the net, then shouldn't we be looking at a way to preserve our existing cultures? The web can be a way to distribute, as well as influence information. So to put two & two together,
4) In economics(imho of it anyway), you need a state to regulate the market for those aspects of it that are against human nature (eg: putting one cable down for each competing cable company, chlildren working in dangerous areas, whatever) but in the interests of the market. Whatever the opinion of the individual we should be aware that if all this memetic babble is true and not just pub talk, something must be done to sort out in which cases the net (and indeed anything else we create ) is actually in our best interests as individuals.
Ale
Valid point! (Score:1)
If I were to "preserve" my culture in that sense(as an ex-chilean refugee) it would probably be all about learning outdated languages or about the lives of kings and generals in whatever old wars. And I have absolutely no interest in doing that!
What I mean by the need to watch out for the influence of the internet's "memetic spread" is more on the side of knowing my past, knowing the history about my culture that is still valuable and that can help me, see for example the fact that my father always thought of europeans as "superior" when we first arrived here, as really educated and rich people. It was hard to un-learn, but easy to understand that british people are actually the same as us chileans in those ways and many others!
This might also apply in the case of slaves, or peasants in similar cases, when for some reason they forget their past, their culture, and therefore what keeps them together as a group and gives them an identity.
I'm not sure what actually happened, but it makes sense to remove that past if you wanted to control your slaves/labourers. Better to tell people that they were animals and had no history, and that you are actually doing them a favour by letting them live and work for you.
So in reality, knowing what it's like to be chilean for me means seeing what happened, in the most open way I can, so I can forgive and understand why I'm here now. Also, chilean cooking rocks!
I wouldn't like to inflict any preservation on anyone, in the way you speak of it, but I hope you can understand from these mixed up ramblings the importance that I see it can have many times. And it isn't just something you can inflict, but also something that can be protected, so IMO free speech or freedom of information needs to take into account the information it's rubbing out beneath it if it is really free.
Ale
Re:intangibles and junk science (Score:1)
medications a replacement for psychology? (Score:1)
I always think that psychology is heading for obsolecenes - after all, many problems caused by an ego and id conflict can be neatly solved by Prozac (or plain old ethanol). The more progress we make in neurobiology, the less we need to rely on a tradition rooted in the last century.
you try taking prozac and see how "neat" a solution it is. You obviously have not had any experience with medications. Chemistry as the sole solution to emotional issues is a concept from the 60's, where everything was instant, in-a-can, in-a-pill, spray-on, etc. The same mentality would ultimately have all cognitive functionality manipuated through physical/chemical means....brings a whole new meaning to getting a college degree (just take a pill, it will assemble all the appropriate neural pathways for you overnight!)
I think talking and thinking will remain as the primary means of overcoming one's emotional difficulties, with medications used as supplemental support for severe illness.
Re:Explaining all human behaviour (Score:1)
A much simpler way to think about it (Score:1)
The body is a cellplex (Score:1)
A rather substantial branch of biology and medicine is based on this point of view.
Still, I'd have to see a bit more evidence that the self-kernal is a mere collection of memes. I suspect that an OS metaphor is closer to the truth: there is a kernal, and there are many core components (memes) that are more or less part of the OS, but not part of the kernal. Is the kernal what we feel as conciousness? Idunno. But I suspect that there is a kernal that is not a meme, in that it does not spread from one individual to another.
What is usualy considered a meme is a more optional item. Maybe an important one like "in this civilization, we usualy wear clothes in public" or "gravel is not food". But we can imagine a person not harboring such a meme, at least for a while. Fundimental items like "breathing once in a while is good for your health" are typicaly not considered memes. And I suspect that the foundation of conciousness is one of those fundimental items. Things like internal dialog, the mind movie, and the self-symbol might be memes, though.
Fear my wrath, please, fear my wrath?
Homer
Science, society, and truth (Score:1)
Religion, philosophy, and the irrational have always played important roles in science. Copernicus' scientific writings included a significant religious component. The structure of benzene was discovered thanks to a researcher's dream. Political, cultural, and economic realities have an immense effect on scientific research: they largely determine which research gets funded, as well as the sorts of theories that occur to scientists. There is no clear boundary between facts and values. The notion that scientific truth is the product of the pure application of a "scientific method" is a fiction.
This fiction exists because of a power struggle over the role of science in society. The question is, who gets to decide what is true for all of society? Religious and scientific groups, among others, have been fighting this battle for centuries. Each group tries to present its kind of truth as pure and infallible.
The human activity we call science encompasses a great variety of approches to truth. Chemistry, astrophysics, archeology, and Chinese medicine don't use the same methods or criteria of success. Rather than defining science in terms of its methods, it would be more appropriate to define it in terms of its goals, which might be described this way: to understand nature, usually in order to control it.
If you're interested in these themes, two classic works are Against Method by Paul Feyerabend and The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn.
--
Re:intangibles and junk science (Score:1)
(Source: Neural Networks - Artifical Brains [force9.co.uk] by Chris Lucas)
--
Are you sure about that score? (Score:1)
Isn't there room for a middle ground? (Score:1)
"you can't have half of Huntington's chorea"
This may well be true (I haven't a clue as to what Huntington's chorea is) but I can tell you that you can have half of sickle-cell anemia. In fact, the reason sickle-cell anemia has become so wide-spread in some specific regions is that the half-way version is a very powerful advantage in those regions. The half-way condition (I'm sure it has a name, but I can't remember it) stops Malaria (I'm almost positive it was Malaria) by only "sickling" (The cells affected will change from the normal disc shape to a curled up curve, looking similar to a crescent moon) those blood cells which were infected by the disease. A cell so affected is culled from the blood stream before it can infect others, and thus, those with this mutation can survive Malaria whereas those without are much less likely to do so. Sickle cell anemia is a case where both parents pass on a copy of the mutation and all blood cells have a chance to become sickled.
Anyways, getting back to the topic at hand, it is possible to have a partial genetic condition. Whereas nucleotides are digital units, genes are not. They are large chains of small units, and the composition and order of those units is what is important. The idea that a meme could be absorbed and then altered stands perfectly to reason and analogy. Consider any retro-virus. These viruses invade and then alter existing cells with their DNA, with their genes to cause something entirely different to occur in some cases, but more frequently to alter what normally occurs very slightly. The cell continues to build proteins, etc. as normal, but the product is what the virus wants, and it normally isn't quite the same as what the cell would ordinarily build. These retro-viruses borrow what already exists "and then modified the that they borrowed."
What components of concepts are so basic that they can be borrowed only as digital units? Well, there are building block units. I'm using them to write to you. Words, letters, phonemes are so small that while they can be modified in appearence, their meaning is very difficult to alter. In the analogy, these are the nucleotides, the individual pices that string toggether to form DNA. Or better, if yu know some cell biology, it is like tRNA. The individual pieces can get altered, but the overall meaning remains the same.
Social Psychology can explain a lot. It can also predict a lot. Then again, the Babylonians, using an Earth-centered astronmical set, could explain the motions in the sky. They could also precisely predict eclipses and severalother phenomona. That doesn't mean it was the best theory to use. Perhaps Memetics can't explain anything new, but it can explain some things better. Social Psychology has a great deal of difficulty explaining some interactions, or the reasons that certain ideas remain when better ones are available (eg. why do people use M$ products over others, or why did people resist the notion that gravity affected all objects equally?) From my limited reading in Psychology, and Social Psychology in specific, the reasons behind these types of occurences tend to be rather long explantions of complex inner workings of the mind, often dealing with general inertia about changing attitudes, views or learning new methods. Well, if a meme was particularly good at spreading, it might also be defensive. It has already claimed a mind and would make every attempt to stop others from invading that would be able to displace it. Memetics may not be an end-all theory, but it certainly could help to explain some things that Social Psychology and commonn-sense knowledge already know to be true, but are unable to expalin directly.
As for critical thinking impossible, I think your Social Psychology memes are interfering with your acceptance of of memetic memes. The idea of an infectious idea is evidently heavily prevalent on the web. It is difficult to believe that anyone would refute that ideas spread quickly, especially someone who purportedly thinks critically. Make sure you are actually thinking, and not just rearranging prejudices. We critical thinkers tend to be a bit more receptive to new ideas, and keep our memes in good order, with defensive mechanisms disabled.
~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
"Veni; Vidi; Vi C++"
Re:is consciousness a meme? (Score:1)
There are plenty of other reasons besides believing that consciousness is special to doubt that consciousness is composed of memes. You could agree with Dennett that consciousness is an illusion created by the interaction of different specialized processing units in the brain, yet contend that many of these processing units are operating the way they are on the basis of biological evolution and that memes, as units of cultural evolution, only come into play "on-top-of" consciousness.
Linguistics and premature theoretical constructs (Score:1)
I havn't read the new book, perhaps someone who has can clarify this for me: is the method in which the memes are introduced taken into account?
The most successful ideas are those that have been marketed well. It's hard to have a successful product without a catchy phrase. Social Darwinism is more Lamarkian than Darwinistic, but Social Darwinism is a better way to sell it -- regardless of the nature of the idea itself and what psychological needs it satisfies.
A number of
But this hardly qualifies as proof -- so let's just sit back, wait and see. If it looks like a solid object, it might just be a lot of empty space with some electrons whizzing around that you can't pinpoint.
more on memes and memetic engineering at disinfo [disinfo.com]
some memes, some shmemes (Score:1)
Genes may be digital, but gene sequences, and hence traits, can be modified. It is these combinations that are modified and transmitted. While I agree that the meme is hardly the "building block" of ideas that popular conceptions have made it out to be, I think it is useful to look at the spread of ideas the way genetic traits spread through species.
It would be interesting to compare the game of "telephone," for instance, to random mutations in genes, especially in a medium like the internet. There are inherent limits to any such analogy--we can change our ideas over the course of one lifetime, and we can do so consciously in addition to the accumulated noise in transmission--whereas a virus can either only survive or die, and the only changes are due to natural selection and random mutation.
Of course, a memeticist would probably argue that natural selection and the conscious adoption/adaptation/rejection of ideas are equivalent, but I think that's stretching the analogy to the breaking point.
Memematics, Gaia and Magrathea's Computer (Score:1)
It was all written before in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The Earth is a very big computer, and as a computer, it is not free from viruses.
As Lovelock says, Earth is huge living been. It is easier if you make analogies of earth with our own body. Neurons are part of our Brain, and they intercommunicate by synapses, having the capability of forming patterns and creating information from our senses.
Now, let's say that the whole earth "thinks", let's say that it have a "uberBrain". So, each one of us are one uberNeuron, and we intercommunicate (by talking and writing) with each other, acting like a very large information system (that produces sciences, religions, answers and questions), that is, the computer that Magrathea created.
Memes are just informations with a very high priority travelling through those uberNeurons. Science is the creativity of the uberBrain, the thing that form "ideas".
If a extraterrestrial advanced civilization come to Earth, they will not talk to individuals, they will talk to the whole Earth, to the uberBrain. They will learn all our science, culture and religions. It will be a uberBrain talking to another uberBrain, because just like you can't talk to a neuron, another civilization can't talk to a individual (uberNeuron).
As I said before, every information that travel have a priority. Informations with low contents like "My socks are white" don't have good priority and are lost easily. But those with high contents (for example this text), are keep forever in the uberBrain travelling between the uberNeurons, and they are called memes.
It may not sound so clear now, but you will heard more about it in the future...
I would like to sorry about the grammatic and ortographic errors because I don't speak you language, I am not from your country, I may even be from another time.
Re:What are memes? (Score:1)
Memes arent religions in and of themselves.
Religions are MEMES
Memes don't have to have moral and cultural systems. They ARE moral and cultural systems. They EVIDENTLY spread themselves throughout society.
A meme is not necesserily an entire cultural system. It is an idea. Just an idea, usually made by tying together two or more other ideas, and transmitted through the medium of language.
Example of religious memes that
Re:What are memes? (Score:1)
anyway, examples:
I. I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt not have strange gods before Me.
Obvious. Use this set of memes, no other. Straightforward bet-hedging.
II. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
Taking the name of the Lord in vain, that is using it in anythig but in a reverential way, decreases the power that word and therefore that concept and its associated concepts have over you, and thus the likelyhood of your spreading the memes for the 10 commandments to children etc...
III. Remember thou keep holy the Lord's day.
This one I can only guess at. First, it inspires a sense of power in the 10 commandments meme, just as above. Second, it gives people a day of chillin, which might have increased survival.
IV. Honor thy father and thy mother.
Facilitates the passage of the 10 commandments meme. If you honor them, you are more likely to have their beliefs.
V. Thou shalt not kill.
In the tribal society out of which these grew, to kill the other believers in the 10 commandments meme would be do decrease believership AND increase the likelyhood of the rest of the society dying off.
VI. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Adultery leads to children of mixed heritages, possibly mixed belief systems, and the resentment of the bastard. The child of such a union is less likely to grow up at all, let alone grow up sharing its father's (whichever one) beliefs. In times when medicine was not as developed as today, and even today, having a child puts a serious physical tax on the mother. Thus, those who do not commit adultery have less resented kids more likely to pass on the 10 commandments meme.
VII. Thou shalt not steal.
Creates strife in afformentioned tribal system. Internal strife leads to doubting on the legal system, killing of believers, and a generally less likely to survive group of people.
VIII. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
Against thy neighbor. That means its fine and dandy to bear false wintess against others, i.e. those who do not ascribe to this set of laws. Lying about your neighbor is sure to decrease likelyhood of the 10 commandments meme's surviving by quite possibly ending in the death of one or both parties.
IX. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife.
Goes back to the adultery, again, notice the neighbor bit. Originally this was inter-tribal. Covet other women as much as you want, spread your seed to the wind, just don't knock up your neighbor's wife or the kid's going to have some issues, and not pass on the meme.
X. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods.
Same deal. Covet the goods of Baal's worshippers all you want. More stuff is good. Just dont let it sow discord within the society.
I could do kosher laws too... Pork poisoning, bacteria, its all fairly oriented toward the passage of memes.
I will cite one more example: An unsuccessful meme:
The Shakers
FOr those of you who don't know, the Shakers were a sect of christianity that made kickin furniture, and believed that sex was evil. period. wanted nothing to do with it.
THere's like one left now, because they restricted the passage of the shaker meme.
It was a bad mutation.
I need sleep.
No Wonder People Are So Stupid! (Score:1)
Re:intangibles and junk science (Score:1)
I can't claim to have read Blackmore's book, but I did take a look at The Dancing Wu-Li Masters and I suspect her work is in a similar vein (based on what I've gathered from this discussion). This is stuff graduate students talk about when they're stoned (at least those I know), it's rather amusing to see it published.