Memetics: Notes

  • Requirements for evolution: variation, selection, and retention.
  • “If there is a replicator that makes imperfect copies of itself only some of which survive, then evolution simply must occur.”
  • Good example of memes: urban myths (study these!)
  • Not all thoughts are memes; our immediate perceptions and emotions are not memes because they are ours alone.
  • “Genes are instructions for making proteins… memes are instructions for carrying out behaviors.” [Not sure if I agree with this!]
  • Although, memes as instructions for behavior is an interesting framing.
  • Also consider the behavior:protein analogy.
  • “A human mind is itself an artifact created when memes restructure a human brain in order to make it a better habitat for memes” [Dennet quote]
  • Distinction between instruction in person’s head (meme) and the actual behavior/technology it produces; Cloak’s i-culture vs m-culture.
  • Why can’t we stop thinking? First, note that this is actually a real puzzle/question, and an interesting phenomenon. Possible answer: memes that “get rehearsed” often do better.
  • Memetic property: gets rehearsed often in thoughts. [Not sure how this happens, though…]
  • “Whenever there is any spare thinking capacity memes will come along and use it”. Analogy to weeds in garden.
  • Meditation: mental weeding.
  • Also, meditation is good for observing part of the meme-cycle first-hand.
  • Distinction: imitation vs classical conditioning vs operant conditioning
  • Memes are transmitted via imitation; conditioning or social learning does not fulfill the requirements for evolution.
  • Definition: meme: whatever it is that is passed on by imitation
  • Copy-the-product vs copy-the-instructions
  • Copy-the-instruction > copy-the-product, in general; more resilient
  • The analogy between genes and memes is only there because they are both replicators; do not let it lead you astray. Many things that genes require, many concepts that are important in genetics, do not have analogues in memetics. “There need be no exact memetic equivalent of the phenotype, or of the vehicle.”
  • “I shall use the term ‘meme’ indiscriminately to refer to memetic information in any of its many forms; including ideas, the brain structures that instantiate those ideas, the behaviours these brain structures produce, and their versions in books, recipes, maps, and written music. As long as that information can be copied by a process we may broadly call ‘imitation’, then it counts as a meme.”
  • Why is silence so hard? Why is it hard not to talk when there’s someone else around? Memes.
  • “Gossip is a substitute for grooming” [Robin Dunbar quote]
  • Can memeplexes actually form emergent intelligent, agentic entities? This is my egregore theory. I’m not sure how legit it is. Think more about whether this is possible or not.
  • I was thinking earlier about memes, memeplexes, and egregores: can memeplexes actually form emergent intelligent, agentic entities? According to one theory of intelligence, intelligence is fundamentally related to computation. So we might ask: do memeplexes perform computation?
  • Memeplexes as neural networks (with memes, or perhaps individual instances of memes, as neurons).
  • Memetic property: seems altruistic
  • Memetics is not very useful when considering true/useful ideas that are successful; we can understand why these spread without appealing to memetics.
  • Memetics is useful when considering true/useful ideas that haven’t spread
  • Memetic property: assuages fear of death
  • Memetic property: something involving illusion of control?
  • Dark-art meme: heaven/hell
  • Memetic property: “be good to those who act/believe like you”; this is perceived through social signals
  • DNA has error-correction mechanisms for when there are errors in copying; do memes or memeplexes have anything like this?
  • What is the correct level of explanation for the self? Self as social construction is decent. Self as memeplex is better.
  • “Memetics provides a new way of looking at the self. The self is a vast memeplex – perhaps the most insidious and pervasive memeplex of all. I shall call it the ‘selfplex’. The selfplex permeates all our experience and all our thinking so that we are unable to see it clearly for what it is – a bunch of memes. It comes about because our brains provide the ideal machinery on which to construct it, and our society provides the selective environment in which it thrives. As we have seen, memeplexes are groups of memes that come together for mutual advantage. The memes inside a memeplex survive better as part of the group than they would on their own. Once they have got together they form a self-organizing, self-protecting structure that welcomes and protects other memes that are compatible with the group, and repels memes that are not. In a purely informational sense a memeplex can be imagined as having a kind of boundary or filter that divides it from the outside world.” [pg 231]